More Russians Have Positive Views of US Than Negative for 1st Time Since 2021

The gap between Russians who describe the relationship between their country and the U.S. in negative terms and those who describe it in positive terms has been narrowing, according to data Russia Matters obtained earlier this week from the Levada Center on the pollster’s multi-question survey on U.S.-Russian relations.

According to the August 2025 poll’s results, the gap between those who assessed the relationship as friendly, good, neighborly, normal or calm and those who assessed it as cool, tense or hostile, decreased from 76 percentage points as of May 1, 2021, to 32 percentage points as of Feb. 1, 2025, to 13 percentage points as of Aug. 1, 2025 (Graph 1). Some 42% of respondents of the August poll assessed current Russian-U.S. relations in a positive light, while the share of those who assessed relations negatively in that poll was 55%. 

Levada also posed a related question to respondents of its August poll: “What is your current attitude as a whole toward the U.S.?” The answers to that question indicate that in August 2025, the share of Russians who have a good attitude toward the U.S. (48%) exceeded the share of those with a bad attitude (30%) for the first time since Nov. 1, 2021 (Graph 2). 

As we have written earlier, the increasingly positive views of the U.S. in Russia could be reaffirming the proposition that whatever major foreign policy decision Russian President Vladimir Putin—who has sought to mend fences with the U.S. during the 2^nd presidency of Donald Trump—makes, most of his country’s subjects tend to eventually publicly support it, even if that decision constitutes a U-turn of the kind Russia’s authoritarian ruler did when deciding to pivot from West to East.¹

The Levada survey has also showed that the overwhelming majority of Russians viewed the Aug. 15, 2025, meeting between Putin and Trump on a U.S. military base in Alaska positively. According to the poll (conducted Aug. 19–27), 79% of respondents viewed the summit positively, and 51% believe the talks should help improve bilateral relations. However, the Russian public remains divided on whether the negotiations will help end the war in Ukraine: approximately half (53%) are optimistic about the prospects for a resolution, while 37% expressed pessimism regarding any positive impact on the conflict. 

Footnotes

1. In August 2025, 69% of Russians said the country was moving in the right direction under Putin’s relationship, unchanged from July, while the share saying it was on the wrong path edged up to 18%, according to Levada. Meanwhile, Putin’s approval rating rose to 87% (up from 86% in July), with disapproval falling by one percentage point to 11%. When it came to politicians, 47% named Putin as the most trusted, followed by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (21%) and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin (20%), with other political figures' ratings trailing in the single digits.

Simon Saradzhyan is the founding director of Russia Matters. 

Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors.