Under the headline ''A tsar is born'', the influential US news magazine Time on Wednesday announced it had chosen Russian President Vladimir Putin as its Person of the Year 2007.
In explaining its choice, Time said ''Putin had performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power''.
Stressing that Person of the Year was not intended to be an honour, the magazine said Putin had achieved his aims at ''significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize''.
''Time's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honour,'' the magazine said. ''It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest.''
''He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech.''
Putin had been chosen for his role in creating stability in the country and ensuring that Russia had re-emerged in 2007 as a major world power.
The magazine said Putin stood for ''stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years''.
Russia, the ''nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century'', it said.
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