Poll: As Ukraine tensions escalate, 62 percent of Republicans say Putin is ‘a stronger leader’ than Biden

With at least , threatening an invasion, more than six in 10 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (62 percent) now say Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a stronger leader” than U.S. President Joe Biden, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

Fewer than half as many Republicans (25 percent) decline to take sides, saying neither leader is stronger than the other.

And just 4 percent of Republicans say Biden is stronger than Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Alexey Nikolsky/ Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images, Andrew Harnik/AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Alexey Nikolsky/ Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images, Andrew Harnik/AP)

“Shame on them,” John Sipher, who worked in Moscow and ran Russia operations during his three decades in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told Yahoo News’s Skullduggery podcast Tuesday when asked about the results. “Vladimir Putin hates the United States. He wants to do everything he can to weaken the United States around the world. He’s attacked our troops in Afghanistan. He’s undercut every foreign policy issue, [including] foreign policy issues that Republicans have supported for years around the world. He’s assassinating people around the world.”

“That’s incredibly, incredibly myopic, political, silly kind of thinking,” Sipher added.

The survey of 1,568 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Jan. 20 to 24 and includes 500 self-identified Republicans and Republican leaners, also found that the number of GOP respondents who believe Putin is stronger than Biden rises to 71 percent among those who name Fox News as their primary source of cable news — and falls to 54 percent among those who prefer other cable-news channels.

In recent weeks, Fox’s top primetime anchor, Tucker Carlson, has repeatedly favored Russia over Ukraine, asking why the U.S. would “take Ukraine’s side and not Russia’s side” and arguing in December that in building up troops along the border.

Ukraine is “strategically irrelevant to the United States,” Carlson . “No rational person could defend a war with Russia over Ukraine.”

The U.S. is not positioning itself for direct war if Russia invades, but has warned of severe consequences for Moscow, including a punishing round of sanctions by both the U.S. and its allies. Many European states are alarmed by Russia strongarming its democratic neighbor, and they worry that such an invasion would prelude more steps by Putin to expand his influence over former Soviet bloc states.

A convoy of Russian armored vehicles moves along a highway in Crimea, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. (AP)

A convoy of Russian armored vehicles moves along a highway in Crimea, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. (AP)

As noted, “Putin is seeking to redraw the post-Cold War boundaries of Europe, establishing a broad, Russian-dominated security zone and drawing Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit by force, if necessary,”

In March 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine; since that year, Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbass region have been mired in a war with Kremlin-backed rebels that has killed more than 13,000 people. As a result, Ukraine has moved closer to NATO, a development that Putin is now using as a pretext for escalating tensions.

Republican views on Russia were likely altered by several years of sympathetic statements from former President Donald Trump, who said in 2016 that Putin “,” Barack Obama. Trump continued to , particulalry as evidence emerged that Putin had to benefit Trump.

Previous polls suggest rank-and-file Republicans, who were once hawkish toward Russia, have increasingly adopted Trump and Carlson’s softer stance. In 2012, then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney after he described Russia as America’s No. 1 geopolitical foe.

Tucker Carlson speaks during the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Feszt on August 7, 2021 in Esztergom, Hungary. (Janos Kummer/Getty Images)

Tucker Carlson speaks during the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Feszt on August 7, 2021 in Esztergom, Hungary. (Janos Kummer/Getty Images)

As Slate’s William Saletan recently , “In Gallup polls before 2016, Republicans generally viewed Russia than Democrats did. Now it’s .” Likewise, “Republicans used to be more likely than Democrats to view Russia as a and to emphasize rather than ‘friendly cooperation.’” But “by 2017, those numbers had turned upside down: Only one in three Republicans described Russia’s military power as a critical threat, and most said the U.S. should instead of limiting Russia’s power.”

Polls taken last June also showed that Putin enjoys a better net favorable rating among Republicans than Biden does, by anywhere from to .

According to U.S. intelligence, Putin’s intentions remain unclear — though he appears to have developed a war plan that includes .

In turn, Biden has said that Russian invasion would be “the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world in terms of war and peace since World War II,” and the New York Times over the weekend that the administration is now “considering deploying several thousand U.S. troops, as well as warships and aircraft, to NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.”

_________________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample

of 1,568 U.S. adults interviewed online from Jan. 20 to 24, 2022. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2020 presidential vote (or non-vote) and voter registration status. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.8 percent.

source: yahoo.com