Putin one of least popular leaders in world history among Americans: poll

Russian president is facing war crimes investigation for Ukraine invasion

Russian President Vladimir Putin is now one of the most unpopular figures in modern world history among Americans, according to a new Wall Street Journalpoll.

Ninety per cent of Americans held an unfavourable view of the Russian leader, while just 4 per cent held a favourable one, according to the study. Meanwhile, 86 per cent of respondents said they held a “very unfavourable” view of Putin.

The findings point to a seismic shift in public opinion about Russia. A decade ago, polling suggests about half of Americans had a positive view of Russia, and even the country’s interventions in the 2016 election weren’t enough to keep more than a third of Republicans from holding a favourable view of Putin.

But the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine seems to have changed things, uniting large swathes of Republicans and Democrats against the Russian president.

Such deep unpopularity puts Putin in league with other controversial leaders and world pariahs like Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-un, and Fidel Castro, according to a Washington Post analysis of the Roper Polling Center archive.

Mr Putin is even less popular than former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milošević, who was the first sitting world head of state to be charged with war crimes, as well as Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who presided over many of the most tense moments of the Cold War.

The Russian president risks following in Milošević’s footsteps, as the International Criminal Court announced earlier this month it has opened an investigation into potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

Russian forces have killed civilians and journalists, and have attacked hospitals and residential areas.

Despite the widespread popular condemnation of the Russian war in Ukraine, popular right-wing commentators like Fox News’s Tucker Carlson have at times seemed to take Russia’s side in the conflict, a stance one reporter said amounted to Kremlin propaganda about the invasion that’s “almost word for word” what Mr Putin might have said.

“Ukraine is not even a democracy," Carlson once said on his show. "Ukraine is a corrupt, eastern European autocracy that has spent millions of dollars lobbying politicians in Washington and made the Biden family rich.”