Among President Vladimir V. Putin’s motives for invading Ukraine, his view of himself as being on a historic mission to rebuild the Russian Empire has always loomed large. On Thursday, Mr. Putin went further, comparing himself directly to Peter the Great.
It was a new, if carefully staged, glimpse into Mr. Putin’s sense of his own grandeur….
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With death sentences, criminal probes and aggressive rhetoric, Russia on Thursday lashed out at Western businesses, the Ukrainian government and three foreign fighters in separate moves that alarmed human rights advocates and underlined Moscow’s defiant stance 15 weeks into the war.
In Ukraine’s Russian-backed Donetsk region, two Britons and a Moroccan man who fought for the Ukrainian military were accused of acting as mercenaries and sentenced to death in what one British lawmaker deemed a “Soviet-era style show trial.” The case sets a foreboding precedent for other foreign soldiers captured by Russia, which has signaled that they would not be afforded the protections granted to prisoners of war by the Geneva Conventions.
Meanwhile, Russian investigators said they have opened more than 1,100 criminal cases against the Ukrainian government, accusing it of crimes “against the peace and security of mankind” and raising fears that captured soldiers will face mass sham trials. In a speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin compared himself to Russia’s first emperor, Peter the Great, and he said businesses that left the country after his invasion of Ukraine “will regret it.”