Russian leader likens himself to 18th Century tsar:
“Putin, Peter the Great”
He has openly likened himself to the Russian tsar, correlating Russia’s attack on Ukraine today with Peter’s expansionist wars some three centuries ago, and making his most powerful revelation yet that his own war is a land grab.
Mr Putin’s alleged empire-building ambitions bode ill for Ukraine and have irked other neighbours, including Estonia, which called his comments “completely unacceptable.”
Russia’s president was meeting young scientists and entrepreneurs when he made the comments. Before talking IT and tech development he talked about politics and power: the new battle he sees for geopolitical dominance. In that, he told his select audience that Peter the Great was a role model.
“You might think he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands,” Mr Putin said, referring to the Northern Wars that Peter launched at the turn of the 18th Century as he forged a new Russian Empire.
“But he seized nothing; he reclaimed it!” he said, arguing that Slavs had lived in the area for centuries.
Peter’s rule, he suggested, was proof that expanding Russia had strengthened it.
When Russia stormed its neighbour on 24 February, Putin falsely claimed it was a “special operation” limited to the eastern Donbas region to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and reduce the presumed threat to Russia.
But even as he was uttering those words, his forces were moving on Kyiv and bombing land even further west. More than 100 days later, a fifth of Ukrainian territory is under Russian military control, with puppet governments who talk of referenda on joining Russia.
Putin now feels bold enough to admit that his “operation” is in fact an occupation.
At the time, “not one European country” recognised Russia’s claim to the land where Peter created St Petersburg as Russia’s bold new capital, Mr Putin said. Now they all do.
His comments have also rattled the Baltic countries. The Estonian foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to condemn his reference to Peter the Great’s assault on Narva, now in Estonia, as Russia “reclaiming and strengthening” its territory.
Putin’s increasingly repressive rule slowly locked that window on the West; the war on Ukraine has denounced it shut. The idea of the Russian leader touring Holland or Greenwich in search of ideas and inspiration, as the Tsar once did, now seems impossible.
Russia is unwavering to project defiance in the face of Western censure and sanctions and Putin himself certainly appeared relaxed rather than beleaguered.
But maybe there is another lesson from the history books.
