You've not explained at all why Putin needed to illegally invade another country, send hundreds of thousands of Russians to their deaths (mostly Russians from outside of Moscow, St Petersburg), kill hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, cripple his economy, etc...To "do what is necessary to run his country successfully" when Russia was mostly fine before this began and had ample opportunity for further collaboration with Europe which would have massively benefited Russia and its population but instead chose caveman imperialism.

Russia's lobbed hundreds of thousands of Russians to their deaths, had an insurrection in their own country, their economy is in the dirt now and entirely propped up by war, their military is battered, they lost any semblance of control of the Black Sea, they caused two new countries to join NATO, they lost a Flagship of their Navy, they lost Syria, they lost any hope in hell of any dominance in the Baltic Sea and they did all this to achieve 15% of Ukraine? Does that sound like any benefit to Russia to you? To the Russian people? That's running his country successfully? Lol.

By your logic, Hitler was one of the best world leaders, despite all the atrocities he committed and despite the fact that it ended with Germany being divided up between multiple countries, Germany's military being destroyed and Hitler laying dead on his floor with a bullet through his brains and his wife dead body laying next to him. Yeah, Germany really won that one didn't they.

We don't have to give credit to these psychopaths, we don't need to call them the "best world leaders" because they're willing to go to war (Wtf?). If UK decided tomorrow to nuke America, it doesn't make Keir Starmer one of the best world leaders, it makes him a psychopath, Lol. Even if we for a second entertain your logic, that some countries doing evil could be beneficial to their countries, that logic does not apply to Russia/Putin at all, the invasion of Ukraine has been a total disaster for Russia in every way possible.

There ain't many people saying Blair and Bush were great leaders because they decided to bomb the shit out of the Middle East.

As long as we all agree that they are belong in the same grouping (along with NK and Iran), I won't comment on your personal preference of country to live in.  

~Banned -Ryuu96.

I have to say Claudia Sheinbaum.
She is trying to improve a semi-free nation with a lot of turmoil like her predecessor (AMLO) did. She's center-left and handling a fascist like Donald Trump quite well.
I don't know enough about some of the most recent prime ministers of New Zealand, but Jacinda Arden (PM from 2017-2023) was probably the best world leader in those 6 years.
The best world leaders have to be left-leaning or center-left in my eyes. Granted, the Overton window varies in countries.
Both of my two choices are women under 65 (and Jacinda was far under 65), but being a woman doesn't necessarily guarantee you'll be a better leader just like men aren't inherently better leaders.

She's not a leader of a country anymore but I like Kaja Kallas.

From the tiny country of Estonia, shows more balls than many in the West.

I want a world where Hideo Kojima runs everything, like no oversight at all, he is just supreme universal leader over everything and even controls every company and private sector and all tech with the goal of him handing power back in whatever form he deems fit once he's figured it all out. We'll be living a post scarcity society in no time, we'd be pulling rescourses out of white holes or crossing into parallel universes where life doesn't exists and we get to mine infinite recourses.... or something. I just have to believe it.

Trump, Pierre if he gets in in Canada, that Polish guy sounds good

Bernie Sanders would be the best world leader today. Unfortunately he was too good for the democrats as well.

Francesca Albanese would make a great world leader as well. Much respect to her holding her own against all odds.

Jacinda Ardern qualifies as well, she led New Zealand practically unscathed through the pandemic where every other 'western' country failed.

There aren't a lot of world leaders I have an especially high opinion of, honestly, even amongst the more left wing examples. North Korea's Kim Jong Un, Venezuela's Nicholas Maduro, Slovakia's Robert Fico, and Cuba's latest dictator, Miguel Diaz-Canel are all examples of current far left type leaders I have little to no respect for, personally (little in the case of Diaz-Canel and none in the other three cases) that come to mind just off the top of my head. I'm not a big fan of some of the more business-oriented liberal ones out there either, like the union-busting, pension-slashing French President, former investment banker, and transparently aspiring tyrant (or "Jupiterian", as he calls it) in his own right Emmanuel Macron, for example. I feel like the world overall is headed in a bad direction.

I demand an activist government that secures the nation's sovereignty and borders, establishes law and order, respects the rule of law and works to expand democracy rather than limit it, clearly expands public welfare and ownership, and yes respects people's basic freedoms while working toward equal justice. Those are my political values. I feel that Sheinbaum is the best head-of-state representative of those values out there today.

It's not a bad case you offer, but to be strictly technical about it, as one of those nerds who likes to do things like rank the presidents of my country for fun (it's an outgrowth of my list fetish ), I feel that people tend to somewhat exaggerate the importance of their own times. Trump is definitely one of the worst presidents we've ever had as far as I'm concerned, but anyone who thinks he's THE worst probably isn't familiar with the likes of James Buchanan, for example, whose actions were so aggressively pro-slavery that it literally broke the country in two, leading directly to a four-year civil war. We have had some really, really bad presidents before. I personally have him ranked in as our fourth-worst. We're living in a kind of second Gilded Age, I believe, and I think of Trump as a Gilded Age mindset type of leader who I rank accordingly.

I have sort of a working list of the IMO ten best presidents we've ever had to contrast with what the worst ones represent:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Franklin Roosevelt
3. George Washington
4. Thomas Jefferson
5. Teddy Roosevelt
6. Woodrow Wilson
7. Lyndon Johnson <-- Sorry, I have to include a Texan somewhere.
8. Dwight Eisenhower
9. Barack Obama
10. Harry Truman

The best of the best guided the nation successfully through the most severe crises and challenges in its history. The worst ones actively created some of the worst crises in our history and only historians even remember them a century later. Just my take.