Russian President Vladimir Putin (File photo: VCG)

MOSCOW, May 31 (Xinhua) -- A new polling method showed that 72.3 percent of Russians trusted the country's President Vladimir Putin, the government-owned research center VTSIOM said Friday.

According to the new methodology, respondents were asked to answer the question "Do you trust or do not trust this politician?"

The survey data on the VTSIOM's website showed that 72.3 percent of those polled between May 20 and May 26 answered the question positively, while 23.7 percent said they did not trust Putin.

To a question not directly specifying concrete politicians, but asking "Who of the politicians do you trust," 30.5 percent of those polled mentioned Putin, ranking the first in the list.

In the previous poll published by the VTSIOM last week, 31.7 percent of the polled chose Putin out of Russian politicians as a whole when it came to the rating of trust.

At the same time, 65.8 percent of those polled between May 13 and May 19 stated that they generally approved of the president's activities.