In his ramblings on Russian history, Vladimir Putin has been referring lately to the Battle of Poltava, 1709, by which Tsar Peter the Great hugely expanded the Russian Empire by defeating the Swedes. He refers to Peter the Great as “my predecessor”.
Putin’s reflections on Russia’s past and his role in its destiny are a weird concoction of fact and fiction. They have to be taken seriously, according to historian Professor Margaret Macmillan. “He thinks like Peter the Great he is repositioning Russia at the heart of Europe,” she said last week.
