Just over half of Russians surveyed have a positive view of Finland, the Finnish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, citing a poll of some 1,600 Russians last summer.
The ministry commissioned a survey carried out in July by the Levada Center, an independent polling organisation established in Moscow in 2003.
It indicates that the proportion of Russians with a positive view of Finland has dropped significantly.
The previous survey in 2021 found that 68 percent of Russians had a positive attitude towards Finland while five percent had a negative view. In this year's poll – taken about five months after the Russian attack on Ukraine and two months after Finland applied to join Nato – the positive share slumped to 51 percent. Meanwhile the proportion with negative opinions about the country's northwestern neighbour more than quadrupled to 22 percent.
This year's was the fourth such survey commissioned by the ministry in Russia since 2017.
Negative shift in NW Russia, little change in Moscow
The results showed significant regional variations.
People in northwestern Russia (including Saint Petersburg, Vyborg, Petrozavodsk and Murmansk) have tended to take a more positive view of Finland. Even in this area, though, the share of positive perceptions dropped from 89 percent in 2021 to 71 percent this year.
Correspondingly, the negative share shot up from just two percent last year to 15 percent in July. A larger number of respondents in the region also declined to state their opinion this time.
The change in Moscow was less dramatic, with the positive share edging down from 79 to 76 percent within a year.
Overall, the proportion of Russians who saw relations between the two countries as chilly or strained climbed from 16 percent to 46 percent. Relations were described as hostile by 4.6 percent of respondents – up from zero in 2021.
Fifty-four percent said that Finland’s possible Nato membership was the biggest threat to bilateral relations – but only 63 percent of the respondents knew of Finland’s intention to join the western alliance.
Best-known Finns: Haapasalo, Häkkinen and Mannerheim
When asked what interested them most about Finland, 37 percent of respondents mentioned nature, while 19 percent mentioned arts and culture, with the same percentage citing tourism and shopping.
The share of Russian adults who said they'd be prepared to move to Finland fell by half, from 18 to nine percent.
The latest survey indicates that actor and gourmet Ville Haapasalo remains the best-known Finn in Russia, followed by former race-car driver Mika Häkkinen, the late president and military leader C.G.E. Mannerheim, with smaller numbers mentioning the late author and artist Tove Jansson, racer Kimi Räikkönen and composer Jean Sibelius.
The survey's margin of error is 3.4 percent .
