The suspicions were fuelled when Putin, while paying tribute to Tsar Peter the Great on his 350th birth anniversary, drew a parallel between what he portrayed as their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands.
"Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned (what was Russia's)," Putin said.
When Peter founded the new capital, “no European country recognised it as Russia. Everybody recognised it as Sweden," said the Russian president. "What was (Peter) doing? Taking back and reinforcing. That's what he did."
Further, he compared Peter's campaign with the task facing Russia today.
“Apparently, it also fell to us to return (what is Russia's) and strengthen (the country). And if we proceed from the fact that these basic values form the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in solving the tasks that we face," said Putin.
He further insinuated that expansion of the Russian territory is inevitable.
"It's impossible - do you understand? - impossible to build a fence around a country like Russia. And we do not intend to build that fence," he said.
In response to this, a senior advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed what he called any attempt to legalise 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.
This comes as Putin has repeatedly sought to justify Russia's actions in Ukraine, where his forces have devastated cities, killed thousands and put millions of people to flight, by propounding a view of history that asserts Ukraine has no real national identity or tradition of statehood.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has maintained that the Ukrainian forces are holding their ground. He said on Thursday that the troops are standing strong in the flashpoint eastern city Severodonetsk where intense street battles with Russian troops could determine the fate of the Donbas region.
Moscow has concentrated its firepower on the industrial city, which it now mostly controls, with the area's governor saying on Friday that Russian forces had destroyed a major sports arena.
Pro-Russian rebels sentenced one Moroccan and two British fighters to death on Thursday after they were captured while fighting for Ukraine and accused of acting as mercenaries for Kyiv.
With inputs from agencies.
