Six in 10 people support the Indian government’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, while one in two agreed to the sanctions imposed by other nations on Russia, according to LocalCircles, a community social media platform.
On Monday, India abstained from a procedural vote taken in the UN Security Council to call for an emergency session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Once again on Wednesday, India abstained from voting in the UNGA resolution condemning Russia's actions against Ukraine.
LocalCircles survey attempted to understand what people think of India's diplomatic position and sanctions imposed by different countries on Russia.
The survey received over 29,000 responses from 351 districts of India. About 62 per cent of respondents were men while 38 per cent were women, 44 per cent of respondents were from tier 1, 30 per cent from tier 2 and 26 per cent were from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.
Out of the 9,655 respondents on the question “How do you believe India should be handling the Russia-Ukraine situation?”, 62 per cent of citizens said India should continue “Just like it is doing (not voting on UN resolutions against Russia and requesting Russia to end violence)”. While 33 per cent of people voted India “Should instead support Ukraine and vote on UN resolutions and support any other sanctions against Russia”. Only five per cent said India “Should continue to not vote against Russia in the immediate term but in the medium/long term move away from supporting Russia”.
Notably, the proportion of citizens that support India’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine situation declined as Russia issued a nuclear threat, the survey found. When LocalCircles asked a similar question to citizens on Feb 26th, 73 per cent of citizens said they supported India’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine situation of not voting on UN resolution, which declined to 62 per cent this week after Russia issued a nuclear threat.
Out of the 9,377 responses to the question of “Keeping India’s approach to Russia aside, do you support all the sanctions that are being placed on Russia for its act of war on Ukraine?”, 28 per cent said, “Yes, absolutely”. While 22 per cent of those surveyed said “Yes, absolutely and many more are needed”, 33 per cent said they did not support sanctions against Russia and 16 per cent of citizens had no views.