Smug tyrant Vladimir Putin has threatened Sweden with "reclaiming" territory as he compared himself to another Russian despot who conquered the country hundreds of years ago.
During an event to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great, the tyrant boasted of picking up where the tsar left off by invading Ukraine.
The autocratic ruler - who is lauded for modernising the country by the Russian public - lead battles including against the Ottomans and seized land from Sweden in the Great Northern War.
While he made Russia an empire, he was also a monstrous tyrant and during one revolt of guardsmen he mercilessly beheaded five of them himself and even had his own son imprisoned and tortured.
"It seemed [Peter] was fighting with Sweden and seizing territories," Putin told his audience of young engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists.
"He wasn't seizing anything! He was taking it back!"
"What was (Peter) doing? Taking back and reinforcing,” he said.
“That's what he did. And it looks like it fell on us to take back and reinforce as well.”
Finland's President Sauli Niinisto was due to meet with Sweden's King Carl Gustav XVI and Queen Silvia on the island of Åland but the meeting was abruptly cancelled - with speculation it was due to Putin's comments.
During the meeting of Russia's best and brightest young adults, he also admitted the public will need to wait a decade before they can shake the constraints of Western sanctions.
A member of the audience asked him: "So will we live better in 10 years’ time?”
He replied: “Yes, in the end this [reaching the goals I have set] will lead to a better life quality.”
It comes as Sweden said it will look to make constructive progress in talks with Turkey on Erdogan's objection to them joining NATO.
Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO last month in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine but face opposition from Turkey.
Erdogan has accused them of supporting and harbouring Kurdish militants and other groups it deems terrorists.
The objections caught Finnish, Swedish and many NATO officials by surprise and have dimmed prospects for rapid progress on the membership bids ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid later this month.
"Our application has received broad support among NATO members," she said in a foreign policy declaration in the Swedish parliament.
"Our ambition is to, in a constructive spirit, make progress on the questions that Turkey has raised."
Linde added that there should be no doubts that Sweden stood together with allies against terrorism.
Sweden's government survived a no-confidence vote on Tuesday with the help of a lawmaker whose demands for support for Kurds in Northern Syria could complicate its attempts to join NATO, all of whose members must approve any new entrants.
Ankara has also hit out at Swedish authorities for halting arms exports to Turkey in 2019 as the country launched a military operation in northern Syria.
While not referring directly to Turkey, Linde said Swedish membership in NATO could "change the conditions for arms exports within our national regulatory framework".
