Poll: 1 in 5 Russians Want To Leave Their Country - Permanently

By Nicholas Sakelaris

The survey indicated that U.S. sanctions against Russia may be having an impact on where citizens want to live. File Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License Photo

(UPI) -- A new survey Thursday showed that 20 percent of Russians want to leave their country permanently -- the highest number in more than a decade.

The survey added that more than twice that amount (44 percent) of citizens between the ages of 15 and 29 said they'd like to leave the country.

Pollster Gallup said the results may be troubling for the Kremlin because the country is already experiencing a population decline. The United Nations has said it expects Russia to lose 8 percent of its population by 2050. 

Gallup said President Vladimir Putin's job approval has had a strong effect on Russians' desire to migrate. 

Top destinations include countries in the European Union (40 percent) and North America (16 percent). They're most likely to name Germany and the United States if they name a specific destination.

Putin has made efforts to increase migration from other nations and encourage more births in Russia.

"Despite the government's efforts to encourage more births in Russia, even more births now will not solve the country's workforce shortfalls in the near future," Gallup said. "To that end, the country is starting to look outside its borders to shore up its declining population."

Another poll Thursday showed most Russians (62 percent) support the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea five years ago, but do not support an occupation of eastern Ukraine. The survey was conducted by Moscow's Levada Center and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The poll also found 58 percent believe Moscow's foreign policies have made the economy worse, while 64 percent said it made living standards worse.

Maybe if all the oligarchs weren't taking all the money and spending it in Europe, things would be much better in Russia. But, certainly, things would be better if NATO and western powers would stop the Russia-hysteria and unethical sanctions.

Mainstream News Networks Refuse to Cover Senate’s ‘No Russia Collusion’ Report

The massive demonization of Russia by western countries

is beginning to unravel

but not if Mainstream Media can help it

AFP/Brendan Smialowski

The same networks that spent 2,202 minutes of collective airtime to push the Russia Collusion Media-Hoax are refusing to cover the Senate Intelligence Committee bipartisan report, which found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The Media Research Center (MRC) did the research and found that between January 21, 2017, and February 10, 2019, “ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, and the NBC Nightly News [spent] 2,202 minutes on the Russia investigation [, which] accounted for nearly 19 percent of all Trump-related reporting [, and now] none of those three shows have even mentioned the investigation since NBC’s report came out on February 12.”

The same is true elsewhere on the left-wing networks.

“Neither CBS This Morning nor NBC’s Today have even acknowledged this new information from Senate investigators since the news broke on February 12,” MRC reports. “ABC’s Good Morning America briefly touched on it in a news brief totaling less than one minute on February 13.”

What’s especially fascinating is that NBC’s Ken Dilanian broke the original news of the Senate report, and NBC is still refusing to cover the story.

The reasons for this are quite obvious: the media know a reckoning is on the horizon, and they are buying time in the hopes of finding a way to wriggle out of it.

Anyone with even a lick of sense knew from the beginning that the Russia Collusion Media-Hoax was a hoax. Not only is the whole idea of it preposterous; everything involving Russia and the Trump campaign points to the opposite of a conspiracy. Look at the Trump Tower meeting. If there was a conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin, why was Rob Goldstone, a British publicist, needed as an intermediary to set up the meeting?

If there was all this collusion between Trump and Putin, why was Michael Cohen left to send proposals to blind email addresses regarding the proposed Trump Tower deal in Moscow?

Even the stuff we are told is the most “sinister” proof of collusion points in the opposite direction.

But that is not what the media have been telling us for the last two years.

Rather, again and again and again, they have promised that Watergate is right around the corner, that the other shoe is about to drop (and please ignore the fact that the first shoe has yet to drop); have told us not to worry because the aberrational nightmare, the virus in the system, the national mistake that is President Trump is about to be removed.

For two years the media have been selling the Resistance a bill of goods and have gone so far as to manufacture a mountain of fake news to keep these suckers on the hook.

So, no, they are not going to cover a bipartisan report that debunks their hoax, especially one as detailed as this one, that involved two years, 200 interviews, and a gazillion documents.

MSM is not interested in the truth, only in pushing their agendas.

'Year Late & Bad Info': California Says DHS Falsely Accused Russia of Hacking its Voting Systems

Campaign to demonize Russia - American style

© Thomas Samson / AFP

It appears that in its eagerness to accuse Russian hackers of meddling in the US presidential election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrongly claimed California's election systems had been breached.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla released a statement in which he confirmed that DHS officials had told him that the state's election system had been “scanned” by Russian hackers.

“Last Friday, my office was notified by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that Russian cyber actors 'scanned' California’s Internet-facing systems in 2016, including Secretary of State websites. Following our request for further information, it became clear that DHS’ conclusions were wrong,” he wrote in a statement published on Wednesday. 

He went on to stress that last Friday's notification from the DHS wasn't just “a year late,” but was also “bad information.”

It's very curious that it took a year for DHS to inform California and other states about this, and that even after a year, they got it wrong.

Now the DHS instead maintains – without any stated evidence – that “Russian scanning activity...occurred on the California Department of Technology statewide network,” rather than Secretary of State websites.

California's Secretary of State does not use the Department of Technology to provide IT services for its website, internet-facing applications, or the statewide voter registration database, according to Padilla's office.

Padilla’s statement added that based on this additional information, “the California Secretary of State elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors.”

As for the Department of Technology allegedly being breached, the office said its security systems were able to block “suspect activity.” However, claims that Russians were behind any such attempt remain unsubstantiated.

Padilla's statement comes after California – along with 20 other states – was told last week that its systems were targeted last year “by Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to US election infrastructure.”

The DHS' mistake in California is the second time in a week that the department's credibility has come into question, as it was forced to backtrack earlier this week on its claim that Russian hackers attempted to hack Wisconsin's election infrastructure.

Just as in the case of California, the DHS quickly pointed to another government department which the elusive Russians allegedly tried to hack – the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. It is an interesting – and once again unproven – claim, considering the office merely oversees job training and unemployment benefits.

Despite ongoing claims and an investigation into Russian meddling in the US presidential election, no evidence has been provided to support the hysteria.

A congressional investigation into Russia’s alleged meddling in the US election has been dragging on 10 months, with any hard evidence explicitly pointing to the role of Russian authorities yet to be produced.

Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in the election campaign.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has rebuffed the meddling claims, on one occasion noting that the US is not “a banana republic,” for others to interfere with its people's choice.

In an interview with filmmaker Oliver Stone in June, Putin instead accused the US of meddling in Russia's most recent presidential elections in 2012, by campaigning on the side of the Russian opposition. 

Moreover, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in August that there is “no doubt” the US will again try to meddle in the 2018 presidential election. 

That same month, US President Donald Trump told a rally in West Virginia that the Russia story is a “total fabrication” and an excuse used by Democrats for the “greatest loss in the history of American politics.”

He said that prosecutors should instead be focused on Hillary Clinton's 33,000 deleted emails rather than alleged Russian meddling.