International community recognizes Russia as one of world’s most powerful superpowers

Gallup and TNS-EMNID research centers exposed the results of an international opinion poll in New York yesterday. Over 10,000 people took part in the research conducted in Brazil, Great Britain, Germany, India, China, Russia, the USA, France and Japan.

Photo: International community recognizes Russia as one of world’s most powerful superpowers

The people placed Russia on the sixth place on the list of world’s leading superpowers and organizations of our times. Almost one-third of the polled (27 percent) believe that Russia has preserved the status of a superpower despite all drastic changes and reforms that it had to go through after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The percentage of those sharing this opinion is quite higher in Russia – 45%. The USA has left Russia behind with 81 percent. George W. Bush is full of energy and ideas to cut the percentage of those people thinking that the USA is the strongest superpower in the world. China takes the second position on the list with 45 percent. Japan completes the top three with 37 percent with USA’s staunch ally Great Britain (32%) and the EU (29%) following.

As for the near future (the time period was limited with the year 2020), the people placed Russia on the fifth position thinking that Russia has all the potential to develop and grow. Russia will still be behind the USA, although the latter will not be able to boast of its previous percentage of success – it dropped from 81 to 57 percent. China (55%), Japan (32%) and the EU (30%) were also placed ahead of Russia. The participants of the international opinion poll said that Great Britain will not be considered one of world’s most powerful countries by 2020. However, Russia will take the lead over the dynamically developing India, Brazil, the South African Republic and the UN (the polled could name international organizations too).

Specialists said that the majority of the polled characterized a superpower as a politically stable, economically powerful country possessing a significant potential in education and science. Every fifth of the polled named the military power as well.

The poll also revealed that the USA made a mistake with its strategy of development. The world population is certain that there can be no unipolar world order created on the planet. The USA's current domination in the world will be minimized and then brought to nothing in the future. However, people do not think that there will be a balance of forces established instead.

The development and the weakening of world's most powerful countries will inevitably result in changing sympathies and antipathies between the countries. Historical conflicts and confrontations will play a certain role at this point as well. Moscow-based Yury Levada’s think tank conducted its own research in Russia trying to find out which countries Russians view as their friends and foes.

As a result, the top five of Russia-friendly countries looks as follows: Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, Germany and India. The list continues with Armenia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, France and Italy. Russian people do not view the USA as a friendly country anymore: it takes only the 16^th place on the list.

The list of Russia’s foes starts with Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, the USA and Estonia. It then continues with Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Moldavia and Poland. It is worthy of note that Russians do not view Iran and Japan as unfriendly countries any longer.

More importantly, the Russian people have become aware of the hostile politics run against Russia by the United States and Ukraine. On the other hand, Ukraine and the USA have been listed as both friendly and unfriendly countries as regards to Russia.

Utro

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.Ru