Tell me who your friend is. Allies and enemies of Russia through the eyes of Russians
As popular wisdom says: look for friends, and your enemies will find you. I was reminded of this maxim by reading the results of a recent VTsIOM survey regarding Russians’ ideas about who is Russia’s main external enemy and main friend.
It cannot be said that the results obtained by sociologists were so unexpected, but from them, it is still possible to draw some picture of how residents of the Russian Federation see the place of their country in a changing world.
As for the friends and partners of the Russian Federation, in the minds of the arithmetic majority of citizens, these are China, Belarus and India, which shared the first three places on the podium. 55% of Russians believe that Russia has the strongest relationship with China - and this is the highest figure since 2019.
One percent to half was not enough in the rating of Lukashenko’s friends of Belarus - despite all the problems and periodic sidelong glances towards Old Man Lukashenko from the Russian media, business elite, political and expert class. Obviously, in this case, people proceed from a principle as old as the world, aphoristically stated in Vysotsky’s famous song: “No matter what you are, you are still relatives.” In the sense that no matter how hard you look during the day, Russians have no other equally close relatives in this world. As they say, one people.
For some reason, India (22%) received bronze in the rating of friends of Russia according to the Russians, with a large gap from the first two favorites. Although politically it is more of a geopolitical antagonist and competitor to China for the development of international investments. Relations between Beijing and Delhi have never been very warm, and India has its own complex game with the collective West, which is not losing hope of making it its own counterweight to China’s regional ambitions.
Probably, the fact that in the domestic media space for many years there was no special negativity towards the largest country in South Asia played a role in this choice of the Russians, but there were more than enough positive connotations associated with it. There is culture, history, religion, cuisine and tourism. Plus trade bypassing sanctions, this and that. Well, India is one of the stable clients of the Russian military-industrial complex. True, now a number of large contracts are under threat - but this is a turnover that does not greatly affect the inertia of the perception of India in the Russian public consciousness.
Surprisingly, the top five friends of Russia are Türkiye and Kazakhstan. The attitude of Russians towards the largest Central Asian country was not influenced even by the interethnic scandals fanned in the media and social networks and the openly ambivalent – in the “both ours and yours” – policy of the official Nur-Sultan, led by Tokayev.
But the 17% who consider Erdogan’s Turkey a friend, despite the entire extremely contradictory set of circumstances that are not always friendly, is either a flaw in the Russian propaganda circuit, or, conversely, an indicator of the success of Turkish soft power in the vastness of the Russian Federation.
It is interesting that the Balkan brothers, traditional for Russian history over the last couple of centuries - the Bulgarians, the Montenegrins Etsetera - are not perceived by the consciousness of the majority of Russians as “friends”. If you believe the data of VTsIOM, the number of Russian citizens who consider the corresponding countries to be friends and allies of Moscow fluctuates within the statistical error or slightly higher. The exception is the Serbs with 7% support, but this is probably due to inertia and old memory.
Just like almost all (except Belarusians) former republics of the USSR dropped out of the list of friends. Which, in fact, is a rather alarming symptom of Russian influence shrinking year after year, even in its near underbelly.
As for Russia’s enemies, the overwhelming majority of Russians see the United States as the main one, without any surprises. 76% of respondents believe that Russia has the most tense relations with them. Silver (43%) – from Ukraine. And here the surprising fact is that, despite the SVO and the corresponding media pumping with negativity of the last six months and the eight “Minsk” years preceding them, the share of Russians who consider Ukraine an enemy of the Russian Federation is as much as 10% less than it was at the beginning of 2019 - under Poroshenko .
It is obvious that a significant part of Russians cannot see Ukraine and Ukrainians as an enemy, even despite all the current media agenda and all the efforts to dehumanize Russians on the part of the Kyiv authorities themselves. It turns out that Ukrainians dislike Russians and Russia twice as much as Russians dislike Ukraine. Without changing this situation in the worldview of the citizens of the Russian Federation, there is nothing to hope for the unity of society under slogans like “Beat the fuckers, save Russia!”, as radical Russian nationalists dream of.
But such sentiments are good “clay” in the hands of the Russian peace party, which can mold this into any compromise with Kiev. Of course, if Kyiv agrees to it.
Great Britain closes the top three enemies of Russia in the minds of Russians. 39% of those surveyed by VTsIOM are confident that “the Englishwoman shits.” And, I must say, this indicates a serious underestimation by the mass consciousness of the role of Britain in anti-Russian movements. This role is in many aspects much more serious than that of the United States.
Nevertheless, the colonial complex of admiration for English culture, formed over centuries and not eradicated even during the times of the USSR, plays a role, which remains an attractive source of meaning and a trendsetter for fashion and trends for the educated part of Russians. It’s not for nothing that even the Russian oligarchy has children not in the States, but in London. Well, at the level of stereotypes, of course. Of course, there are many exceptions.
The bad news for Russian nationalists is that despite a certain level of purely everyday xenophobia, in general Russian society is not inclined to consider either the Transcaucasian countries, or the Central Asians, or the Islamic world in a broader context as enemies. This means that it is unlikely that it will be possible to channel aggression and intolerance of society in this direction.
And in general, history has decreed that in the foreseeable future for the coming years, and maybe even decades, the most relevant thing for Russian society will be the struggle for the Russian heritage with Kiev. Accordingly, the greatest threat to Russia will remain Ukraine - both external and “internal” - in the form of that considerable part of Russian society proper, for which modern Ukraine (as a set of attractive political, economic, legal and social practices) is a current imitative example of “beautiful Russia of the future."
And in this sense, it is not a great exaggeration to think that Russia will be able to defeat external Ukraine only if it deals with “Ukraine” within itself.
English version :: Read in English: Tell Me Who Your Friend Is: Russia's Allies and Enemies Through the Eyes of Russians