Survey Says: Russians See US as Greater Threat than IS

In a recent poll in Russia concerning possible terrorist threats to the country, carried out by the All-Russia Public Opinion Center, Russians answered that the United States was most likely to be the source of a terrorist threat to Russia; coming above Islamists insurgents in the North Caucasus or Islamic State. A year ago, before the annexation of Crimea and the ensuing rebellion, Russians viewed Islamic terrorists as the most plausible terrorist threat to the country. Several events have led to this stark change in Russian public opinion, most notably the development of the Ukrainian crisis, which has seen Russo-American relations dip to their lowest point ever since the Cold War. Credibly, it is hard to see the United States as a sponsor of terrorism, but this is indicative of an overarching trend in which Russia and the United States become more adversarial and begin to have increasingly irreconcilable misperceptions of one another.

One year ago, in the same poll, 4% of Russians viewed the United States as the biggest terrorist threat to their national security, while 20% regarded Islamist extremists as the largest threat. This year, Islamists received 13% of the vote, and the United States climbed up to 22%; Ukraine received seven percent. The drop in the threat level vis-a-vis Islamic terrorism is also due to a rise in the confidence in the government’s ability to mitigate the insurgents. This month, 60% of the respondents indicated that they trusted the government to protect them from terrorist threats, opposed to only twenty-three, after the January Volgograd bombings. A former security official hypothesized that this was in part due to the successful Sochi Olympic Games. On the other hand, this could also be indicative of a reassessment of priorities for a plurality of Russians. The Russian portrayal of the Ukrainian crisis has revolved mainly around tying the government in Kiev and the West with ultranationalist fascists seeking to destroy Russians in the country.

Since the United States has backed the Ukrainian government since the fall of Yanukovych and been at odds with Russia over the future of the country, their relations have chilled, anti-Americanism has increased in Russia considerably. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Governor of Chechnya, accused the United States of sponsoring “IS devils” and claiming that the militants’ leader is a CIA employee. By presenting the United States as the underlying problem with Islamist insurgency in the Middle East, and its spread into the youth of the North Caucasus, the Russian people’s perceptions of the United States continues to widen the gap between the two countries. Although an overwhelming majority of Russians did not identify the United States as the largest threat to their security, the striking rise in that opinion might lead Russia as a whole to continue to move in that direction.

This poll is a demonstration of the continuing deterioration in East-West relations. A decade ago, Russo-American collaboration against Islamic extremists was commonplace – Russia being one of the main parts of the American military distribution network in Afghanistan – and it would serve both of the countries interests to collaborate once more against Islamic extremism in the form of Islamic State. However, the wedge between the two countries fundamental visions of the world has been growing for years now, and since February, it has exploded. A separate poll in Russia asked who Russians thought was their country’s biggest enemy, and 73% answered the United States – opposed to 25% in 2008. In parallel, the American public views in record numbers Russia “unfavorably”. The standoff between the two countries has embittered their publics against one another, and while the United States is not credibly expected to engage in a terrorist struggle in Russia in any point in time, the fact that a considerable size of the Russian population does is a testament to the damage Russo-American relations have suffered in 2014. Unfortunately, at the heart of this divergence is the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, in which Russia and the United States are seemingly worlds apart – and will probably continue to be so in the foreseeable future.