Nearly three years ago, in the wake of Western governments’ denunciations of the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and its invasion of eastern Ukraine, Russian approval of the United States and European countries plummeted. In the Russian media, sanctions placed on Russia by both parties were presented as proof of the West’s determination to destroy or ruin Russia.
But since those events, Russians’ approval of the United States and the West have slowly rebounded from the lows they hit at the beginning of the conflict.