Tsar Peter I waged wars against the Swedish in the Baltics which smashed Stockholm's empire and established Russia as one of the great European powers Stockholm and Helsinki submitted NATO applications after watching Putin ride roughshod over security agreements between Ukraine and Russia with his invasion - fearing their own agreements with Moscow were now effectively worthless. Putin's words will be viewed as both a thinly-veiled threat to the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which fear he will launch war on them once he is done with Ukraine, and to Sweden and Finland as the two countries bid to join NATO. And if we take these values as fundamental to our existence, we will prevail in the issues we are facing.' 'It has fallen to us to take back and strengthen. 'He wasn't seizing anything! He was taking it back!'Дropping another historical reference, this time to the Battle of Narva in modern-day Estonia which opened the war, he continued: 'Why did he go there? He went there to take it back and to strengthen it, that's what he was doing. 'It seemed was fighting with Sweden and seizing territories,' Putin told his audience, a smirk on his face, as he spoke about the founding of St Petersburg on land once held by Sweden.

Putin, speaking on the 350th anniversary of Tsar Peter's birth yesterday, referenced the Great Northern War which saw an anti-Sweden coalition - led by Moscow - smash the Swedish empire and establish Russia as a new imperial power in Europe. Vladimir Putin has compared himself to Russian tyrant Peter the Great as he bragged about 'reclaiming' land in Sweden in a chilling new threat to European security.

Pinner tutoring services