Peter the Great: Putin's Dangerous Delusion

I wrote in June 2022 about my personal global threat index notching up. Then I read news about what is delusion on a grand scale by Vladimir Putin.

Speaking to an audience made up of young scientists and entrepreneurs, he likened himself to Peter the Great.

“You might think he was fighting with Sweden, seizing their lands,” Putin said, supposedly referring to the 21 year Northern War which Peter launched at the turn of the 18th Century as he enlarged the Russian Empire.

“But he seized nothing; he reclaimed it!” Putin asserted, saying that Slavs had inhabited the region for hundreds of years.

Smirking, he said “It seems it has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen”. - BBC

Enlarged the Russian Empire? That's classic imperialism.

At the time the Baltic States reacted swiftly and furiously.

And what about Ukraine?

As part of an agreement with Poland that ceded Kiev to Russia, Peter was forced to wage war against the Crimean Khan and against the Khan's overlord, the Ottoman Sultan. (Wikipedia).

Ukraine was never part of Russia. He bought from Poland at the cost of a war.

Megalomania?

Then time went on, with a huge battle to capture Azov.

Peter the Great captured Azov.

Putin captured Azov.

Another similarity.

But let's look at the legacy of Peter the Great and start to see that the similarities end.

Peter the Great

Peter I (1672 – 1725), most commonly known as Peter the Great, was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from 1682 to 1721 and subsequently the Russian Empire until his death in 1725, jointly ruling with his elder half-brother, Ivan V until 1696. He is primarily credited with the modernisation of the country, transforming it into a European power. (Wikipedia)

Putin is actually undoing the modern Russia and taking it back to serfdom, where prisoners are used as cannon fodder, where trade with most of the world is severely curtailed and where Russian industry is being put on a war footing to produce yet more unreliable weaponry.

Autocrat

Peter believed he did not have enough loyal and talented persons to put in full charge of the various departments. Peter preferred to rely on groups of individuals who would keep check on one another. Decisions depended on the majority vote. (Wikipedia ibid.)

The Ukraine war is Putin’s war. He teased his own security council by not revealing his aggressive plans in the week before he launched it. It had been the same before the strike against Crimea in 2014, when he did not bother to alert prime minister Dmitri Medvedev or foreign affairs minister Sergei Lavrov about what he intended. Putin’s personal dominance is unmistakable at the apex of political power. Like Stalin, he treats his ministers as errand boys. - The Spectator

But Stalin had Beria in the NKVD. Putin has emasculated the FSB.

Major miscalculations

Peter the Great was a strategic thinker and got the important decisions correct.

Looking back, it's clear the Putin has had a long term strategy under way, Peter the Great or not. But he has met his nemesis in Ukraine.

Putin has made several key miscalculations:

• he underestimated the expected strength of Ukrainian resistance
• he underestimated the resolve of the West and NATO to dig in behind Ukraine
• he underestimated the capability of Zelenskyy as a leader
• he overestimated the capability and readiness of the Russian armed forces
• he forgot that Ukraine had been training its army on the job since his first adventure in 2014 in Donetsk, Lukhansk and Crimea.

By his efforts he has pushed Sweden and Finland to apply for membership of NATO.

And Ukraine into the EU, imminently.

Diplomatic disaster

On 23 February 2023, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a non-binding resolution calling on Russia to immediately withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

There were 141 votes in favor, 7 against (Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea, Eritrea, Nicaragua, and Mali), and 32 abstentions (including China and India).

This picture tells it all.

There was no UN in the time of Peter the Great, but he was adept at forming alliances and adhering to treaties.

Putin has torn upo many treaties, including those relating to Ukraine.

A religious legacy

Peter founded The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, an organization that mocked the Orthodox and Catholic Church, when he was eighteen.

Putin has Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and ex-FSB spy as his religious mentor.

According to the Sonntagszeitung and Le Matin Dimanche weeklies, a Swiss police file referred to the Russian patriarch as "Monsignor Kirill" and confirmed that he "worked for the KGB," which is now known as the FSB. The newspapers said they gained access to Kirill's file through the Swiss national archives, as translated by The Moscow Times. - IBTimes

And Putin is now a war criminal.

There's no going back.

But his place in history is assured - although it's not the one he dreamed of.

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