Time Magazine Nominates Putin for 'Person of the Year'

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been nominated by the American magazine Time for the title of 'Person of the Year.' Other nominees include King Charles III of Great Britain, the Barbie doll from the namesake film, American singer Taylor Swift, Chinese President Xi Jinping, ChatGPT creator Sam Altman, and various Hollywood screenwriters and actors.

Time magazine has been selecting the Person of the Year annually since 1927. In 2022, the title was awarded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and 'the spirit of Ukraine,' and in 2021 to entrepreneur Elon Musk.

The title was first awarded in 1927 to American aviator Charles Lindbergh, who was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Political and social figures have been named Person of the Year more than 70 times, including Mahatma Gandhi (1930), Winston Churchill (1940, 1949), Queen Elizabeth II (1952), Charles de Gaulle (1958), Martin Luther King Jr. (1963), Henry Kissinger (1972), Deng Xiaoping (1978, 1985), Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), Lech Walesa (1981), Pope John Paul II (1994), and Pope Francis (2013), Angela Merkel (2015).

All American presidents after Franklin Roosevelt have received the title, except Gerald Ford. Roosevelt is the only one to have received it three times—in 1932, 1934, and 1941. Among the recipients are five leaders of the USSR and Russia: Joseph Stalin (1939, 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957), Yuri Andropov (1983, alongside U.S. President Ronald Reagan), Mikhail Gorbachev (1987, 1989), and Putin (2007).