According to a new poll published on ABC News and the Washington Post on Friday, Americans are showing some of their highest levels of hostility toward the Russian Federation in 40 years.
Conducted between Sunday and Thursday amid rising tensions in Eastern Europe, the poll found that 80% of Americans see Russia as unfriendly or an enemy of the United States.
According to ABC, that’s the highest percentage seen since 1983, when Russia was part of the Soviet Union - although colloquially still called Russia in American culture - and when nuclear tensions between the socialist and capitalist alliances were also at their peak.
Just 12% of Americans see Russia as a friend of the US, according to the poll; that number was at its highest in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, when two-thirds of Americans saw Russia as friendly toward the US.
Large majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents all said they saw Russia negatively, but they varied between 78% of GOP voters and 86% of Dems, with independents in the middle at 81%.
That said, a smaller majority of Republicans (62%) said they supported sanctions against Moscow, with 79% of Democrats and 63% of independents supporting economic coercive measures. On Thursday, US President Joe Biden unveiled far-ranging sanctions against Russia’s largest banks and state enterprises, as well as other markets, which he said were crafted for maximum destructive effect.
The negative attitudes have become especially visible in recent days, after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “neutralization” operation in Ukraine to eliminate the threat posed by NATO potentially using Ukraine as a base from which to attack Russia. The operation came after months of failed negotiations over Russian security concerns, over which Putin had warned NATO was approaching a “red line.”
Speaking to CNN on Thursday, US Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) suggested extensive punishment for Russians in the United States.
"Frankly, I think closing their embassy in the United States, kicking every Russian student out of the United States - those should be on the table,” Swalwell told CNN. “Vladimir Putin needs to know every day that he is in Ukraine, there are more severe options that could come.”
After Fox News reported on Swalwell’s interview, the California congressman interpreted it as an attempted “own,” tweeting in response that “the comments section agrees with me.“
“Looks like they miscalculated America. We don’t root for Russia. You bet wrong,” Swalwell added.
Outside Russia’s embassy in Washington, DC, on Thursday, protesters wrote “murder” in red paint on the pavement. According to The Hill, US Secret Service arrested the demonstrator and charged them with defacement of public property.
Thursday afternoon, a popular Russian restaurant in Washington, DC’s affluent Dupont Circle neighborhood, Russia House, was vandalized. Photos posted on social media showed several of the restaurant’s street-level sashed windows knocked out.
Russia House already held a certain fascination for some US liberals thanks to a dinner there shortly after then-US President Donald Trump’s inauguration that figured into larger Russiagate theories about how Putin allegedly interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.
Things were little better to the north in Canada, where on Friday, liquor stores began removing vodka and other beverages of Russian origin from their shelves at the direction of provincial governments.
The extensive demonization of Russia and Russians following Trump’s election victory has likely contributed greatly to Americans’ negative views of Russia. This included labeling Sputnik and RT as “propaganda outlets,” forcing them to register with the Department of Justice as “foreign agents,” and hounding them off the airwaves as much as possible.
In late 2017 and early 2018, the White House and Pentagon issued a series of major strategy documents explaining a shift away from the US War on Terror and toward what they called “great power competition” and “inter-state strategic competition” with Russia and China.
These documents accused Moscow and Beijing of being “malign actors” seeking to overturn what they called the “rules-based international order” - another name for the post-Cold War international order in which the US reigned triumphant and unchallenged across the globe. They cast Russia and China as renegade states who pose a danger to the world by trying to assert their equality in that system and refusing to let the US dictate to them the terms of their participation in the world political and economic system.