Putin the Great? The president of Russia is compared to the famous tsar.

Among the reasons of the president Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, his vision of himself as part of a historic mission to rebuild the Russian Empire has always been great.

Putin went further on Thursday, direct comparison with Peter the Great.

It was a fresh, albeit carefully staged look at Putin’s sense of his own greatness.

Putin celebrated the 350th anniversary of Peter’s birth on Thursday by visiting a new multimedia exhibition about the tsar in Moscow.

He then held a town hall-style meeting with young Russian businessmen and opened it by reflecting on The conquest of the Baltic coast by Pietro during its 18th century war with Sweden.

Putin described the land conquered by Peter I as legitimately Russian.

“It was bringing him back and strengthening him,” Putin said, leaning back in his chair, before suggesting with a smile that he was now doing the same thing in his war in Ukraine.

“Well, apparently, it happened to us too come back and get stronger “.

Putin said that when Peter founded the city of St. Petersburg on the conquered land, “none of the countries of Europe recognized it as Russian.”

That comment seemed to be a clear reference to today, when no Western country recognized Moscow’s claim Crimeamuch less on the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine that Russia has seized in the past three months.

Putin seemed to suggest that the West, as it did centuries ago, would eventually do so he would realize and recognize those regions as Russian.

Peter, the first emperor of Russia, has always been an object of fascination for Putin, who hails from St. Petersburg.

The Russian president keeps a bronze statue of the tsar next to his ceremonial desk.

But in recent days, Russian officials have particularly forcefully promoted confrontation between Putin and Pedro; On Thursday, the governor of St. Petersburg said he feels the same pride in today’s Russian soldiers in Ukraine “as we do. we are proud from the memory of Pedro’s warriors.

There is at least one historical problem with official confrontations between Putin and Peter the Great.

The tsar is known for opening Russia’s “window to Europe”, building St. Petersburg in a European mold and bringing Western technology and culture to Russia.

Many Russians fear that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine willclosed that window.

Last week, a Russian journalist asked Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov if the window to Europe was closing.

He replied: “Nobody is going to close anything.”

Putin repeated that message in his meeting with businessmen on Thursday, insisting that Russia it would not be closed to the rest of the world as did the Soviet Union.

Although the United States and the European Union do not want to do business with Russia, he said, the countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa Yes they will.

“Our economy will be open; those who are not interested will steal from themselves, “Putin said.

“It is impossible to fence a country like Russia and we have no intention of putting such a fence around us.”

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