Putin, Likening Himself to Peter the Great, Hints Ukraine War Will Be Long

Speaking at a new Moscow exhibition dedicated to Peter the Great, “Peter I: The Birth of the Empire,” Vladimir Putin compared himself with the 17th century Russian monarch — and in so doing reaffirmed Western suspicions that the Russian strongman perceives his war on Ukraine as a rebooted imperial quest. While strictly speaking the event fell under the category of culture, there isn’t much in Russia these days that is not mixed up with politics. Sure enough, Mr. Putin’s remarks fit that bill in more ways than one. “Peter the Great waged the Northern War for 21 years. You might think ‘he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands…,’” he said, but added: “He wasn’t capturing them. He was reclaiming them.” Mr. Putin was born in Leningrad, the city that Peter the Great founded as St. Petersburg. Against the evocation of a war that lasted two decades, albeit one that ended three centuries ago, three-plus months of Russian combat in Ukraine could be seen as almost the bat of an eyelash. “When Peter the Great laid the foundation of a new capital in St Petersburg, none of the European countries recognized this territory as Russian. Everyone recognized it as Swedish,” Mr. Putin told a group of entrepreneurs and scientists who were attending the exhibition. “But along with Finno-Ugric peoples, Slavs lived there from ancient times. Why did he invade it? To reclaim and strengthen [the state]. That’s what he did. It seems that it’s our turn now to return and strengthen.”He did not stop there: “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.” According to the Guardian, critics said Mr. Putin’s remarks proved that his complaints about historical injustice, NATO’s eastward expansion, and other grievances with the West were all simply a facade for a traditional war of conquest. Russian forces have destroyed cities and by even the most conservative estimations killed thousands of people in Ukraine, a state that Mr. Putin believes has an inauthentic national identity that renders it ripe for his taking. Or, to listen to his latest line, for his taking back.Before Mr. Putin’s visit to the exhibition, the British newspaper also reported, state television aired a documentary praising Peter the Great as a tough military leader who greatly expanded Russian territory at the expense of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire with the modernized army and navy he built.The Russian leader’s remarks drew an immediate rebuke from a top advisor to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, who tweeted on Friday, “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. We should not talk about ‘saving Russian face,’ but about its immediate de-imperialization.”The latter part of that tweet was a barb directed at the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who on more than one occasion has said that the West needs to avoid “humiliating” Russia. The bad blood between Kyiv and Paris did not stop President Zelensky and Mr. Macron from speaking on the phone yesterday. According to Mr. Zelensky, topics the two leaders discussed included the situation on the battlefront, further support of Ukraine, and, most intriguingly, “work on security guarantees.”

Putin, Likening Himself to Peter the Great, Hints Ukraine War Will Be Long

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