According to a multi-nation Gallup poll published, Greece and three other NATO member-states would prefer Russia fighting on their side! By far the largest number of countries polled by WIN/Gallup International chose the U.S. for their go-to defense partner, suggesting that it remains the world’s only military power with truly global reach and alliances, but Greece, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Turkey, all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation chose Russia as their fighting partner. Another interesting finding showed that Russia and China would pick each other as allies in the event of military conflict. The findings revealed how the geopolitical security concerns had shifted, with Greece and Bulgaria seeing Turkey, a partner of both in NATO, as the number one threat for their security. Although Turkey is also a NATO member and so theoretically an ally, its invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus in 1974 showed that these countries cannot rely on NATO to protect them, so they look to Russia. The Gallup poll also broadly reflects a divide between the Orthodox Christian world and Western Christianity, with Orthodox Greece and Bulgaria opting for Russia, while Ukraine and Bosnia Herzegovina — which are also religiously divided — split down the middle.

Catholic Slovenia, which largely escaped the brutal wars that accompanied the dismembering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, was an exception in narrowly opting for Russia. So was Romania, a mainly Orthodox Christian nation that picked the U.S. But these shifts and fractures are spreading well beyond the Balkans. WIN/Gallup International polled about 1,000 people in each of 66 countries around the world, between October and December 2016. The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 to 5 percent.