Vladimir Putin's admiration for Peter the Great is well known but he now seems to have ideas of "Great"-ness himself.
He has openly compared himself to the Russian tsar, equating Russia's invasion of Ukraine today with Peter's expansionist wars some three centuries ago, and making his strongest acknowledgment yet that his own war is a land grab.
Mr Putin's apparent 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 remarks. Before talking IT and tech development he talked 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 which 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.
"It seems it has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen," Mr Putin concluded, with a near-smirk that left no doubt he was referring to Ukraine and his aims there.
Peter's rule, he suggested, was proof that expanding Russia had strengthened it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61767191