AKIPRESS.COM - A majority of Russians consider China, Belarus and Kazakhstan key partners and friends of Russia, while they believe the US is Russia’s main rival, head of All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center (WCIOM) Valery Fyodorov told TASS on Wednesday.

According to the survey WCIOM conducted on October 25-26 2014, 51% of the respondents named China among Russia’s friends, while 32 and 20% respectively voted for Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, less than one percent named the United States a partner-country, while 73% agreed that America was Russia’s number one enemy. Besides the US, Ukraine (32%), the EU and Germany (10%) are believed to be among Russia’s rivals. Moreover, Italy, France and Japan were considered Russia’s partners by only one percent of the surveyed.

As a matter of fact, 82% of the respondents supported the idea that the criticism of foreign mass media towards Russia’s President Vladimir Putin could be considered as an attempt to destroy the country and to make it fall apart. Nevertheless, 12% disagreed with the statement, while 6% remained unsure.

Eventually, 87% of the surveyed believe that foreign mass media criticize Russian government in order to undermine Russia, to make it weaker. Meanwhile, 4% said the opposite and 9% refrained from responding.

Public opinion specialists surveyed 1,600 men and women of age in 130 cities of 42 Russian regions. The error margin of the poll did not exceed 3.4%.