Poll shows Russians not keen to abolish capital punishment

About 70 per cent of Russians polled oppose the abolition of capital punishment, despite the country's commitment to abolish it as a requirement for Council of Europe membership, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

A poll of 1,500 Russians conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation in mid-November found that only 21 per cent of respondents said capital punishment should be abolished at once or phased out step by step.

Another 9% were undecided.

Respondents younger than 30 were more supportive of the abolition of the death penalty.

Only 17-18 per cent of respondents in other age groups were in favour of scrapping capital punishment, the agency said.

Supporters of former Russian Security Council Secretary Alexander Lebed and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov took the toughest stand against getting rid of capital punishment, rejecting the idea by 81% and 78% respectively.

Only 14% of Lebed's supporters and 17% of Zyuganov's supporters would like to bring an end to executions in Russia.

About 63 per cent of First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov's supporters were against abolishing the death penalty, while 28 per cent were in favour, the agency said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.