YEREVAN, DECEMBER 26, ARMENPRESS. Nearly half of respondents named President Vladimir Putin politician of the year in a survey by the Russia Public Opinion Research Center VTsIOM, reports TASS.

"Vladimir Putin, mentioned by 46% of respondents, remains the politician of the year for Russians. He is trailed, far behind, by [Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov (15%), [Defense Minister] Sergei Shoigu (10%), [LDPR party leader] Vladimir Zhirinovsky (7%), [Prime Minister] Dmitry Medvedev (6%)," the survey says.

Among the main domestic events of the outgoing year, Russians named the pension reform (10%) and the launch of the Crimean Bridge’s railway section (4%).

The telephone-based survey was conducted by VTsIOM-SPUTNIK in November-December 2019. It involved 1,600 stationary and mobile phone numbers, picked up by the two-staged stratified random sampling method from the full list of phone numbers in Russia. With the possibility of 95%, the margin of error does not exceed 2.5%.