By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A broad bipartisan majority of Americans think the United States should stop buying Russian oil and gas and work with NATO to set up “no-fly zones” to protect Ukraine from Russian air strikes, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Friday.
The poll, conducted Thursday and Friday, suggests that U.S. outrage is growing over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which in recent days has increasingly involved Russian bombing of urban areas.
That puts pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden to take more aggressive actions against Moscow although he has dismissed the notion of no-fly zones because of the risk of open conflict between NATO and Russian forces.
It was not clear if respondents who supported a no-fly zone were fully aware of the risk of conflict, and majorities opposed the idea of sending American troops to Ukraine or conducting air strikes to support the Ukrainian army.
Some 80% of Americans – including solid majorities of Republicans and Democrats – said the United States should stop buying Russian oil, according to the poll.
An equally bipartisan 74% of Americans said the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine.
The poll on Ukraine was conducted online and in English throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 831 adults and has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Cynthia Osterman)
