Emergency.Blog

Russia's Putin Named Time 'Person of the Year'

19 Dec 2007 - 12:00 CST

Putin is named Time 'Person of the Year'

NEW YORK - According to the Associated Press, Time magazine on Wednesday named Russian President Vladimir Putin its 2007 "Person of the Year."

The nod went to the Russian leader because of Putin's "extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability," said Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor.

Putin, 55, is enormously popular in Russia, presiding over a resurgent economy flush with revenue from oil and natural gas. But critics say he has moved the country away from Russia's democratic reforms of the 1990s by tightening control of the media, courts and parliament.

"He's the new czar of Russia and he's dangerous in the sense that he doesn't care about civil liberties, he doesn't care about free speech," Stengel said.

Get the whole story at: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/
article/1,28804,1690753_1690757_1690766,00.html

[Emergency.Blog editorial/opinion/comment: If Time magazine were Komsomolskaya Pravda, Putin is 'person of the year'. Otherwise, Gen. David Petraeus and his efforts for freedom of the Iraqi people wins "Person of the Year" honors...in the opinion of Emergency.Blog staff.]