By The Moscow Times | Created at 2025-03-14 09:15:23 | Updated at 2025-03-14 13:03:45
3 hours ago
Around 30% of Russians now view the United States favorably, nearly double the share from before U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January, according to a Levada Center survey released Thursday.
Positive attitudes toward the U.S. had plunged to 12% in May 2023 — the lowest level since Levada began tracking sentiments in 1997. Attitudes have remained significantly low following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The latest survey, conducted in late February among 1,615 respondents across 50 Russian regions, found that 30% of Russian adults now have a positive view of the U.S., up from 16% in September. Meanwhile, negative views of the U.S. have fallen sharply from 72% in September to 51%.
The share of respondents who were unsure also rose from 13% to 20% over the same period.
Since Trump took office in January and pledged to broker a swift end to the war in Ukraine, Russian state media have increasingly portrayed him as a pragmatic leader open to engagement with Moscow. However, reports suggest the Kremlin has quietly instructed media outlets to scale back their positive coverage of Trump.
Historically, Russian attitudes toward the U.S. have fluctuated in response to global events.
In 2008, after the Russo-Georgian war, U.S. favorability among Russians plummeted as the Bush administration condemned Moscow’s actions and sent humanitarian aid to Georgia. However, positive sentiment later rebounded, peaking at 63% three years later, according to Levada.
A similar decline followed the 2014 annexation of Crimea and Russia’s support of separatists in eastern Ukraine, after which the U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia.
The largest post-annexation surge in positive sentiment toward the U.S. came in the summer of 2018 after the Helsinki Summit, where Trump publicly sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies on election interference.
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