MOSCOW, Aug 27 (Reuters) - A large majority of Russians favoured 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 recognise 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 Aug. 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 recognising 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)