Levada-Center: Russians have grown more distrustful of the Kremlin and the Duma

Russians have lost more faith in their public institutions, reported newspaper Vedomosti on Wednesday, citing data from the survey of independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research organization Levada-Center collected over the course of the week following Russia's most recent parliamentary elections in September 2016.

As follows from the results of the study, only 26 percent of respondents trust the government and 22 percent trust the State Duma, compared with a similar study conducted in 2015, where 45 percent and 40 percent trusted the two institutions respectively. Most Russians trust the president, however, though even this statistic has lowered from a previous 80 percent to 74 percent.

The survey was conducted from September 23-26, 2016; 1,600 respondents participated in the survey.

Levada-Center deputy director Alexei Grazhdankin said the statistics are slowly returning to what they were before the annexation of Crimea. "People in ... a besieged fortress are ready to support what is occurring for some time, but then restrictions [are introduced and] their attitudes towards the power system as a whole start to be affected."