Russia's leader wants to be seen as a moderniser but is more like Ivan the Terrible, says academic
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, June 9 2022. Picture: SPUTNIK/MIKHAIL METZEL/KREMLIN/REUTERS
In televised comments on day 106 of his war in Ukraine, he compared Peter's campaign with the task facing Russia today. Peter the Great, an autocratic moderniser admired by liberal and conservative Russians alike, ruled for 43 years and gave his name to a new capital, St Petersburg — Putin's hometown — that he ordered built on land he conquered from Sweden.
In April 2020, as Russia entered its first coronavirus lockdown, he drew bemusement in some quarters when he compared the pandemic to 9th-century Turkic nomadic invasions of medieval Russia during a televised address to the nation. In the run-up to the war, Putin blamed Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, for creating Ukraine on what Putin said was historically Russian territory, and for planting the seed of the USSR’s eventual collapse.
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