Support for Russian President Vladimir Putin plunged as Russia is increasingly becoming a coronavirus outbreak hot spot.
Putin’s approval rating now sits at 59%, an 11-point drop from October before the health crisis began, independent pollster the Levada Center announced Wednesday. A total of 33% of Russians polled disapprove of the country’s long-time leader, according to the Moscow Times.
The drop marks the lowest approval rating for Putin since September 1999 when he was the newly appointed prime minister. The poll was conducted in late April with 1,608 respondents surveyed over the phone instead of in person because of the pandemic. The Levada Center, which is Russia’s only independent pollster, said the approval rating could actually be even lower because people are less inclined to criticize government authorities over the phone than in person.
“Thus, when reading the results, you can and should take into account the probability of a hypothetical ‘drop’ in certain indicators compared with personal surveys,” the pollster said.
The pandemic as of Wednesday afternoon has infected at least 166,000 Russians and killed more than 1,500. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that he tested positive for COVID-19 and went into isolation.
While the Russian economy has taken a hit, it is feeling a particularly significant blow from plummeting oil prices.
Still, the Kremlin said it is “not inclined to fully trust” the troubling poll numbers.
“There are other surveys that paint a different picture,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
Putin hit previous lows in June 2000 and November 2013 when his approval rating sunk to 61%.
