Ringing Out the Old By Grigory Pasko, journalist The new year is a holiday for all. For the president of Russia especially: he was officially appointed to this post precisely on New Year’s Day, in 2000. They say that in this upcoming year, Putin is going to leave the post of president: the Constitution does not allow him to be elected to a third term. But they also say that he doesn’t intend to wander too far away from this post, so that there would be an opportunity in a year to once again return in the capacity of president. What can you do? Power, like a disease, is infectious. In the year about to end, the American magazine «Time» acknowledged the Russian president as person of the year. Let’s take a look – in honor of the New Year! – at this person with a bit of light humor, and from another side – not the one from which the obsequious colleagues from «Time» looked at him.