Even his early biographies, like the one Voltaire wrote about him in History of the Russian Empire under the reign of Peter the Great (1763), identified two fundamental aspects in the monarch's ...

Sergey Mardan has claimed Russia could restore its long-abandoned empire.

Putin—with his KGB lieutenant-colonel mentality—does not want to let Ukraine follow its own path toward democracy and Europe. He wants to reconstruct the empire.

VLADIMIR PUTIN'S invasion of Ukraine has stoked fears that he's intent on reclaiming territory from the old Russian Empire. But which countries actually fell under its sphere of influence?