Russians Still Prefer Putin As President

Russian President Vladimir Putin would secure a landslide victory if a presidential race were to be held this coming weekend, a new survey shows.

According to the opinion poll conducted by the independent Russian pollster Levada Center, 55 percent of respondents said they would vote for Putin if they went to the polls next Sunday.

When asked about the presidential elections due in 2018, 57 percent of those surveyed said they would like Putin to be reelected for another term, while only 25 percent preferred another person and 19 percent were still undecided.

The survey of 1,600 people was carried out in 134 communities on February 20-23.

A recent survey conducted by Public Opinion Foundation revealed that Putin’s trust rating stands at 85 percent, up from 75 percent recorded a year earlier.

The figures have been released at a time that the Russian economy is grappling with different woes.

The United States and the European Union have imposed several rounds of sanctions on Moscow over what they call Russia’s involvement in Ukraine’s conflict. The Russian Federation categorically denies the allegation.

The international credit rating agency, Moody’s, recently cut Russia’s sovereign rating by one step from Baa3 to Ba1, a speculative or junk grade, citing the impact of the ongoing crisis in neighboring Ukraine as well as the decline in oil prices and the value of the Russian currency ruble.

The Russian president, however, has emphasized that the economy will start boosting again, saying, “The economy will grow. And our economy will get out of the current situation.”

Russia supports Iran’s SCO membership

In another context, a senior Russian official announced that his country is throwing its weight behind Iran’s membership at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

“The SCO will benefit from the full membership of Iran,” Russian Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan ZamirNabiyevichKabulov said on Thursday.

Kabulov also expressed the hope that during the upcoming SCO summit in his country serious political decisions will be made to start the admission process of Iran.

Russia says it will host the next summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the city of Ufa in July 2015.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in February that the criteria for adding new members to the SCO were approved during the 2014 summit in Tajikistan and that more applications for membership will be reviewed.

The SCO is an intergovernmental organization which seeks to strengthen mutual trust and good-neighborliness between the member countries; facilitate their effective cooperation in political, trade-economic, scientific-technical and cultural areas as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection; joint maintenance of peace, security and stability in the region; towards the creation of a democratic, just and rational international political and economic order.

It was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Iran, along with four other countries, currently holds observer status in the organization.

PRESS T.V, FNA

R.S