For the third time in a row, Russian President Vladimir Putin topped the ranking of the world’s most powerful people, issued by US magazine Forbes. The second position was taken by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was just fifth in 2014. US President Barack Obama retreated to the third place compared to the second he held the previous year. The Day asked Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Lilia SHEVTSOVA to comment on the decision of the American publication.
“These rankings, and primarily Forbes’s one, surprised me greatly, because in fact, these criteria are criteria of weakness. Obviously, this ranking is based on Forbes’s understanding of Putin’s alleged tactical victories and the fact that his approval rating in Russia has reached 87 percent. In reality, though, we are not dealing with true victories for Putin, but his defeats, including in Ukraine. His ongoing ‘flight’ to Syria confirms it. In fact, Putin’s sky-high rating means only that people do not tell pollsters the truth. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union had an approval rating of 99.9 percent in the month of its downfall. Forbes’s ranking is thus a clear proof of this publication’s total misunderstanding of what is happening with Putin and Russia. Moreover, it is a most vivid proof of Forbes’s unprofessionalism.
“In addition, the whole ranking structure applies different criteria to Putin, Obama, Merkel, because their rankings are different, and are based on different data, and the quality of their victories and defeats is different, and Russia and the US are different as societies. In one case, we deal with a ranking of lies and hoaxes, but other cases present entirely real country rankings that can be checked upon. These are countries that are understandable to observer and do not constitute a ‘cloud in trousers’ [a fantastic notion created by the Russian Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. – Ed.].”
