VLADIMIR Putin has issued a fresh chilling threat to Sweden as he compared himself to Russian tyrant Peter the Great and bragged about ‘reclaiming’ land in new footage.

Putin, referenced the Great Northern war which saw an anti-Sweden coalition led by Moscow during his talk to mark the 350th anniversary of Tsar Peter’s birth.

Speaking to the audience with a smirk on his face, Putin said: “It seemed [Peter] was fighting with Sweden and seizing territories.”

“He wasn’t seizing anything! He was taking them back!” he added.

Referencing the Battle of Narva, he said: “Why did he go there? He went there to take it back and to strengthen it, that’s what he was doing.

“It has fallen to us to take back and strengthen. And if we take these values as fundamental to our existence, we will prevail in the issues we are facing.”

The news comes as Putin’s ‘brutal’ battle for the key city of Severodonetsk will determine the fate of the Donbas region according to Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in intense street fighting and under day and night shelling in Sievierodonetsk, officials said.

Russia pushes to control the bombed-out city, key to its objective of controlling eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on Thursday the situation in Sievierodonetsk was “extremely complicated” and Russian forces were focusing all of their might in the area.

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