Gazprom, a Russian energy company, is alleged to have been specifically hit by sanctions imposed as a result of the conflict with Ukraine. According to an internal document obtained and made public by the Financial Times, the company is unlikely to be able to retrieve gas sales lost since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for at least ten years.
However, Alexey Miller, the chairman of Gazprom, appears to be working on his company’s location St. Petersburg Lachta Center skyscraper’s construction of an 82-meter magnificent column. The column did honor Sweden’s victory in the First World War, which saw Russia declare itself for the first time an empire.
Due to its king, George I, who likewise held the position of being in charge of Hanover, Russia spearheaded a coalition that included much of what would eventually become Poland, Germany, and Britain. One of the most important historical figures of the time, Charles XII of Sweden, was in a fight with Peter I of Russia, also known as” the Great.”
The Treaty of Nystad, which gave Russia and Sweden the power to establish an empire, was signed on September 10, 1721, and it granted Russia and much of what is presently Finland. The emperor had established the empire in St. Petersburg in 1703 at the mouth of the River Neva on the Baltic Sea, and it would continue to do so until February 1917 and the eradication of Tsar Nicholas II.
But Vladimir Putin’s passion for the project could be said to represent his personal goals and objectives for Russia in the twenty-first century under his leadership. The Russian leader wants to highlight a number of similarities in his portrayal of himself as a contemporary Peter the Great.
The first is his association with Peter I as a great military leader and the Great Northern War as a formidable martial triumph. In light of Putin’s claims that Ukraine is an intrinsic part of Russia, it’s worth noting that the victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War paved the way for the absorption of Ukraine into what would later become the Russian kingdom by overthrowing a rival great energy and wreaking havoc there.
Over the past 80 years, the major accomplishment of Russia’s war has been the Great Patriotic War, which is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. However, the government wants to present Russia’s record as a triumphant parade, so it will pick and choose victories that are appropriate for its contemporary narratives.
In line with my partner Geoffrey Hosking‘s observation in 2017, Putin wants to appear as a member of a lineage of outstanding Russian officials. This attitude brings to mind tsarist political and military may and the realization of security through the development and averment of fresh power.
It is not difficult to understand the implications for today. The foe main military powers, particularly Sweden, represented in the form of the Great Northern War as a signal of Russian rebellion against the West. Putin has referred to the Great Northern War as a conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine.
Between 1708 and 1709, Hetman ( military commander ) [Ivan Mazepa] established an alliance between several thousand Hetmanate cavalry, a sizable Zaporizhian Cossacks, and the forces of Swedish King Charles XII. At the Battle of Poltava ( 1709 ), Russian forces under Peter I resurrected this alliance.
Modern-day- time emperor
Peter the Great’s part in all of this is also capable of reply. In recent years, the second king has become somewhat popular in Russia. For a writer, this is a curious advancement because, on one level, there is an apparent contradiction here. Peter was quite open to using American technologies to modernize the Russian state; St. Petersburg, his city, was frequently referred to as Russia’s “window on the West.”
He was also a powerful leader who won military battles against another formidable adversaries and developed state dominance.
A trio of statues of leaders are displayed in Putin’s Kremlin chamber, where he greets foreign tourists and displays them as emblems of his own accomplishments. One of these is Peter I. Peter, which has also been used openly as a framework for Putin’s comparison of recent behavior in Ukraine with earlier battles against Sweden. Speaking of lands as” Russian estates,” Putin refers to the north wars as reclamations of land that was actually Russian.
Eventually, the commemoration of royal- era champions is striking. In 2011 Putin was reported to had told his ministers to give “at least a week’s wages” each to finance a monument of Pyotr Stolypin, a tsar- era statesman and administrator who is one of Putin’s social heroes. The memorial was erected in Moscow’s Freedom of Russia Square the next time.
Putin attended a service to pay tribute to the murder of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, the next Russian tsar, who had been killed by a criminal weapon in February 1905. A copy of the king’s memorial bridge, actually erected in 1908 and removed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, has been installed. Putin characterized the situation as a celebration of Russia’s historical and cultural roots.
These memorials all fit Putin’s desire to emphasize the country’s confidence and identity. It’s a program that closely relates to his invasion of Ukraine and emphasizes his role as a contemporary representative of Russia’s royal brilliance.
George Gilbert is Lecturer in Modern Russian History, University of Southampton
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