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Director of the IMEMO Feodor Voitolovsky made a comment on the correlation between the Russian public opinion’s perception of the US and the dynamics of the Russia-America relations for the VCIOM.

In the year of 1999 Russian society was shocked by the US and the NATO military operation in Yugoslavia. The positive attitude towards America, developed during the “Perestroika” in the USSR, started eroding. During the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict in the year of 2008, when the intervention of the Russian Federation was required, the Russian public saw the United States to be the source from where the crisis originates and believed that the assistance of the Washington was behind the attempt of the Georgian leadership to resolve the issue of the ownership of South Ossetia by force.

There are many events happened in the year 2014: the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the Maidan, the change of the regime in Kyiv, the events in eastern Ukraine. Behind all the events there is a clearly-seen position of the United States, which actively supported the actions of the new Kyiv regime, the anti-Russian course and the orientation of the Ukrainian political, business and bureaucratic elites towards disengagement from Russia. The Russian society, surely, saw the key role of the United States in the development of the situation in Ukraine. These events were closely associated with the deep crisis in Russia-America relations. The United States had now become seen not as a country with high living standards or as a model of successful socio-economic development, but more as a source of risks and threats, more as a competitor and opponent of Russia.