On June 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his imperial ambitions clear. During an event celebrating the 350th anniversary of the birth of Russia’s Peter the Great, Putin compared himself to the late czar and suggested that the recent invasion of Ukraine was about “taking back” land — a statement that contradicts his previous assertions that Russia is simply executing a “special military operation” to “denazify,” but not conquer, Ukraine.
These kinds of statements are a sign of Putin’s increasing isolation on the world stage and should disillusion anyone who believes he will be satisfied with concessions and appeasement.
Putin’s politics are rooted in the past, in fighting ghosts and reclaiming lost glory. Last summer, he published a sprawling essay arguing that Ukraine had been unjustly stolen from Russia. Similarly, he has used ostentatious parades to stoke the memory of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.
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