More Americans are supporting arms supplies to Ukraine

As long as an armed conflict between government troops and separatists supported by Russia continues in eastern Ukraine, the public is increasingly sympathetic to the supply of arms to Ukraine and the strengthening of sanctions against Russia. This is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted recently by the Pew Research Center.

According to the results of this poll, which was conducted from 18 to 22 in February, in which 1 504 American adults participated, those who are against arms supplies to Ukraine are more (53 percent) than those who favor arming this country (41 percent). However, the number of those who support arms shipments to Ukraine has increased by 11 percent since April 2014.

At the same time, more respondents support the introduction of additional economic and diplomatic sanctions against Russia. Six out of ten respondents (60 percent) believe that sanctions against Russia need to be strengthened, while 34 percent are against it. The number of those who support tougher sanctions against Russia increased by 7 percentage points compared with April last year.

The results of the survey also showed that the opinions of Americans, who believe that the United States should train the Ukrainian military, and those who do not think so, divided roughly in half: 49 percent for and 46 percent against.

The attitude to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is extremely negative: 70 percent of respondents treat him badly, including 41 percent - very bad. Only 12 percent treats him well, while 16 percent has no opinion on this matter.

More and more Americans are learning about the situation with the participation of Russia and Ukraine: 39 percent say they heard a lot about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, those who heard something about this conflict, 41 percent, and only 19 percent did not hear anything about what was happening .
Most Americans (76 percent) believe that what is happening between Russia and Ukraine is either of great importance (30 percent), or of some significance (46 percent) for the national interests of the United States.