PETE'S SAKE!
Vlad’s ‘Great’ claim
Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared himself to Peter the Great, likening his invasion of Ukraine to the late17th-century czar’s quest to “reclaim” Russian lands.
The Kremlin strongman, 69, made the remarks in Moscow on Thursday on the 350th anniversary of the birth of the ruler, who is credited with modernizing Russia and founding St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, on land conquered from Sweden.
“Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he reclaimed [what was Russia’s],” Putin told a group of young entrepreneurs after visiting an exhibition dedicated to the monarch.
Putin also said that when Peter founded what would become Russia’s capital in 1703, “no European state recognized that territory as Russian land. Everyone considered it to be Swedish land.”
“The Slavs together with the Finno-Ugric peoples had always lived there, moreover this territory had been under the control of the Russian state,” he added.
Putin has repeatedly sought to justify Russia’s Ukraine invasion, which has killed thousands and displaced 12 million people since Feb. 24, by arguing that Ukraine has no national identity of its own, and that Ukrainians and Russians are one nation artificially divided.
‘To reclaim’
In the televised comments, Putin compared Peter’s campaign to expand Russia’s territory to his own mission.
“Apparently, it also fell to us to reclaim [what is Russia’s] and strengthen [the country],” he said. “And if we proceed from the fact that these basic values form the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in solving the tasks that we face.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, cited the remarks as proof that Putin’s true aim is to steal land, not defend Russian-speaking Ukrainians or “denazify” Ukraine.
“Putin’s confession of land seizures and comparing himself with Peter the Great prove: there was no ‘conflict’, only the country’s bloody seizure under contrived pretexts of people’s genocide,” he tweeted.