Almost half
of Russians say the Kremlin should withdraw from its military campaign
in Syria, according to the results of a Levada Center poll published
Tuesday.
Some
49 percent of respondents said Russia’s intervention in the Syrian
conflict should end while 30 percent, less than one-third, were in favor
of Russia’s continued involvement in the conflict, now in its sixth
year.
Russia
entered the Syrian war in 2015 with a series of airstrikes it said
targeted Islamic State, a banned terrorist organization in Russia. The
Kremlin’s intervention on the side of Bashar Assad is widely seen as
having turned the tide of the war in favor of the regime.
Almost
one-third of respondents, 32 percent, said Russia’s campaign in Syria
was in danger of becoming a “new Afghanistan,” referring to the Soviet
Union’s decade long war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which cost more
than 10,000 lives.
Forty
percent said they did not expect Russia to become entrenched in a
conflict comparable to the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan.
According
to Levada, 18 percent of Russians closely follow the war in Syria and
are up to speed with its latest developments, while 26 percent of
respondents said they don’t know anything about Russia’s role in Syria.
The
poll comes as a Russian frigate in the Mediterranean on Tuesday fired
on Islamic State targets in Syria, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in an
online statement. The ministry said the strikes targeted militants from
Russia and the former Soviet Union, estimated at 9,000 in 2017.
Levada’s survey was conducted between Aug. 18 and 22 among 1,600 people in 48 Russian regions.