President Vladimir Putin spoke of the need for Russia to "take back (territory) and defend itself" in a speech to mark the 350th anniversary of Tsar Peter the Great's birth.
Putin compared himself to the conquering monarch and drew parallels between Peter's founding of St. Petersburg and his own government's annexation of territory.
Peter the Great gave his name to St. Petersburg — Putin's hometown — that he ordered built on land he conquered from Sweden.
"When he founded the new capital, no European country recognized it as Russia. Everybody recognized it as Sweden,'' Putin said. "And Slavic people had always lived there along with Finno-Ugric people, and the territory was under the control of the Russian state.''
"What was he doing? Taking back and reinforcing. That's what he did. And it looks like it fell on us to take back and reinforce as well,'' he said.
A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected Putin's comments as an attempt to legalize the theft of land.
"The West must draw a clear red line so the Kremlin understands the price of each next bloody step ... we will brutally liberate our territories," Mykhailo Podolyak said in an online post.
