RBK Daily: OBAMA OUTRUNS PUTIN

US President Elect Barack Obama topped Newsweek's list of the world's fifty leading politicians, businessmen, and community activists, published shortly before New Year's. Chinese President Hu Jintao came second, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy third. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the only Russian on the list, ranked 9th.

Another three political leaders are in the top ten-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, 7th, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 8th, and Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, 10th. Financiers, ranking 4th to 6th , are US Federal Reserve System Chairman Ben Bernanke, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, and Masaaki Shirakawa, Governor of the Bank of Japan.

As the authors of the list acknowledge, it proceeds from their intuitive opinions, so its ratings are extremely subjective-which means it's no use to base objective evaluations on it. "The Newsweek list is a kind of advance payment to world leaders, mainly Obama, in expectation of their resolute steps. The American public needs a somewhat authoritarian leader who should act tough, never mind what the people say. Everyone looks forward to another Roosevelt, but is wary lest they get a Hitler or a Stalin instead," Yury Shevtsov, Director of the Centre of European Integration, told RBK Daily.

Vladimir Putin was always among the top three in similar rankings of a year and more ago, so his present setback deserves special attention. "His present rating reflects the present Western opinion of official Moscow. The lower oil prices get, the more Russian influence shrinks in the opinion of the Western media. What we see today is an attempt to arrange a new hierarchy in which Russia should not be close to the top," Shevtsov says. He expects Washington and Brussels to use Russia's present weakness to oust it from the regions it still influences. "The West is bargaining with Minsk, and the European Union has advanced the concept of Eastern partnership to bury Russia's integration plans on the territory of the former USSR. The West is advancing eastward as dynamically as in the 1990s."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is conspicuously missing from the list-which means American journalists and people-on-the-street do not think much of him. "As they seek to marginalise Russian rulers, the authors of the list transparently hint to their readers that, on the one hand, nothing depends on the present Russian President and, on the other hand, even Vladimir Putin, whom they regard as the true Russian leader, has an ever smaller impact on domestic and foreign politics alike. Anti-Russian phobias are raging, and we can assume that the public is being indoctrinated to consider that political and economic pressure on Moscow is justified," Stanislav Byshok, professor of psychology at the Institute of Economics, Politics, and Law, told RBK Daily.