Almost half of Russian respondents named “kindness” or being “kind-hearted” as Russia’s prevailing national traits in a new opinion survey on the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Participants in both Russia and Ukraine were asked identical questions about their emotional response to the war, the effect of sanctions and what message they would send to people on the opposing side.
The answers from Russia suggest the country’s “active military operations have not yet had a significant influence on Russians’ self-perception”, said Elena Koneva, a poll analyst and founder of ExtremeScan, a non-governmental research initiative that helped conduct the survey.
