Moscow, Apr 13 (IANS/RIA Novosti): Almost one in four Russians (23 percent) expect the human race to be contacted by representatives of an alien civilization in the next 50 years, says an opinion poll.
But a majority (53 percent) said they did not believe in aliens. The poll quizzed 1,500 respondents.
"Those who believed that contact would be beneficial for humanity were two times greater than those who believed the opposite," the Public Opinion Foundation pollster said in a statement.
The poll was carried out to mark Cosmonauts Day, which commemorates Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin's groundbreaking flight into space in 1961.
The findings came shortly after an influential priest in Russia's Orthodox Church said people often mistook angels and demons for aliens.