By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow : Leading US magazine Foreign Policy has named Putin as the most powerful person in the world, but at the second place with the top spot left empty.
Author Ian Bremmer explains why no one was ranked first as being because “in a G-Zero world, everyone is waiting for someone else to shoulder responsibility for the world’s toughest and most dangerous challenges”.
He based the ranking on “a quick, informal survey around Eurasia Group on power and global politics”.
The Russian president is followed by US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who is ranked third, German Chancellor Angela Merkel at fourth place and US President Barack Obama in fifth place.
Then come European Central Bank head Mario Draghi (6), Chinese Communist Party Secretary General Xi Jinping (7), Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (8), International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde (also 8) and Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abd al-Aziz (10).
“The leaders you’ll see named further down this list are preoccupied with local and regional problems and don’t have the interest and leverage needed to take on a growing list of transnational problems,” the author wrote.
After the top spot’s empty chair, Putin comes in second.
“In Russia’s personalised system, this is still the person who counts. He isn’t as popular as he used to be, and his country has no Soviet-scale clout or influence, but no one on the planet has consolidated more domestic and regional power than Putin,” the magazine said.