Russians back Georgia rebels' independence: poll

Deputies of Russia's Duma lower house of the parliament stand in a minute of silence to commemorate those who died in the conflict in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia during a session in Moscow August 25, 2008. Russia's lower house of parliament on Monday called on President Dmitry Medvedev to recognise Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A large majority of Russians favored recognition by Moscow of two breakaway Georgian regions even before President Dmitry Medvedev announced he backed their bid for statehood, according to a new poll.

Seventy-one percent of Russians said Moscow should recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, if the pro-Moscow regions requested recognition from the international community, according to pollster VTsIOM.

Ten percent opposed recognition and 19 percent said they found it difficult to answer, VTsIOM said. The survey of 1,594 people at 140 polling points across Russia was conducted on August 16-17, and had a margin of error of 3.4 percent.

The poll was conducted after most of the fighting in Georgia had ended but before Tuesday's announcement by Medvedev that Moscow was formally recognizing the breakaway regions as independent states.

The West said Russia's intervention to crush Georgia's bid to retake South Ossetia by force was disproportionate and condemned Russia's unilateral recognition of the separatists.

Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke from direct Georgian control in the early 1990s, have been demanding recognition for more than a decade.

Few in the West see the fledgling new states as viable and according to the VTsIOM poll, 63 percent of those questioned said Moscow should agree to absorb the two regions into Russia should the separatists request it. Only 16 percent disagreed.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; Editing by Jon Boyle)