Russians trust Wikileaks data

According to a survey by the Yuri Levada Analytical Center, every fourth Russian is aware of the sensational scandal surrounding the Internet resource Wikileaks.

Of those surveyed who know about the publication of secret documents on the site, the majority have a positive attitude towards this fact. Only 10% of the population stated the opposite, and among young people this figure was 21%. The center's experts believe that such figures can be generally explained by the desire of the general public to be more aware of the activities of government officials.

Half of the respondents are confident that authentic documents are published on the site. A high percentage of young people (32%) see pressure from interested forces in the situation. 32% of low-income Russians also believe that the cases are fabricated.

Slightly more than a third of respondents (39%) believe that the information about corruption of the Russian authorities posted on the website is reliable. At the same time, about half of the respondents (47%) found it difficult to analyze the situation in any way. When asked about the possible damage from the publication for relations between Russia and the United States, half of the population (48%) also could not give a specific answer. The number of supporters of versions that publications will affect relationships or will not matter to them is almost equal - 27% and 24%, respectively.

In November of this year, about 250 thousand documents from the US diplomatic service were published on the WikiLeaks website, which contain very unexpected data. In particular, many world leaders received unflattering descriptions of them. For example, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev were compared to Robin and Batman, and Russia itself was called a “gangster state.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev demanded that intelligence officers take into account the changed global information flows and avoid “leaks.” The president noted both the positive and negative aspects of the globalization of information flows: “In some ways this is good, at least for intelligence it allows you to include additional analytical capabilities and look at how potential competitors view you,” the president said. “In some ways, this creates difficulties, because, for obvious reasons, no one is immune from such problems today, and this must be taken into account in the course of ongoing work,” President Medvedev emphasized.

Earlier, the president, commenting on the publication of correspondence between American diplomats on the WikiLeaks website, said that if the assessments that the Russian Foreign Ministry and intelligence services give to the United States were leaked to the media, “Washington would get a lot of pleasure.”