President draws parallel with tsar who waged war on Sweden and says campaign in Ukraine stems from Russia’s ‘basic values’
“Apparently, it also fell to us to return [what is Russia’s] and strengthen [the country]. 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.”
It was a project that cost the lives of tens of thousands of serfs, conscripted as forced labourers to build Peter’s “window to Europe” in the swamps of the Baltic Sea coast. In April 2020, as Russia entered its first coronavirus lockdown, he drew bemusement in some quarters when he compared the pandemic to ninth-century Turkic nomadic invasions of medieval Russia during a televised address to the nation.
By contrast, the Russian leader offered cautious praise for Joseph Stalin for creating “a tightly centralised and absolutely unitary state”, even as he acknowledged the Soviet dictator’s record of “totalitarian” repression.
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