Interfax: Putin isn’t fussed about Forbes’ declaring him world’s most powerful person

MOSCOW. Nov 12 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has played down the fact that Forbes’ magazine has declared him the world’s most powerful person.

“I’m grateful to the experts at Forbes, but this is what I think of it: one is always uneasy about it because it’s restrictive somewhat, it may put restrictions on your decision making,” Putin told South Korean radio and television network KBS.

“By all means” let experts do their job, “but I prefer not to pay too much attention to it,” Putin said. “Because, if you attach too much significance to it, it’ll affect your decision making. That would be extremely deplorable.”

“Today one leader gets this status, tomorrow another one, the day after tomorrow a third one,” the president said.

“The influence of Russia primarily depends on the state of its economy, of course,” he said.”We both are among the world’s largest economies. Russia is the fifth largest economy in the world, and the Republic of the Korea the 12th largest. In actual fact, that is the main source of influence.”

“But there is one more factor, one that I consider to be very important. It is the moral principles that a society espouses and the means that a government uses in defending those moral principles,” he said. “I would like to achieve a situation where those moral principles and the means that are used in defending them coincide as much as possible.”

“I think that in that case our influence on global affairs would grow many times over,” Putin said.