For the second straight year, Russian President Vladimir Putin was named the World’s Most Powerful Person by Forbes magazine. Leading international counterparts like Barack Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping, Putin takes the lead based on “an evaluation of hard power.” This year, Putin annexed the multi-ethnic peninsula Crimea, engineered a war in Ukraine, and signed off on the world’s largest construction project, a $70 billion gas pipeline deal with China. Furthering geopolitical uncertainty, Putin has made casual references to Russia’s approximately 8,484 nuclear warheads in a move that many analysts speculate as a clear challenge to NATO member …read more
Source: Business Insider
