Hillary Clinton says Vladimir Putin’s Crimea occupation echoes Hitler
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Version 0 of 1. Vladimir Putin is a tough but thin-skinned leader who is squandering his country’s potential, Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday, a day after she likened the Russian president’s actions on the Crimean peninsula to those of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.Clinton, the former US secretary of State who is a potential 2016 presidential contender, warned during a speech at the University of California on Wednesday night that all parties in the Ukraine crisis “should avoid steps that could be misinterpreted or lead to miscalculation at this delicate time”.Putin has said he is protecting ethnic Russians by moving troops into Crimea. Clinton said on Tuesday at a closed fundraising luncheon in Long Beach that Putin’s actions were similar to what happened in the Nazi era in Czechoslovakia and Romania.“Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s,” Clinton said, according to the Press-Telegram of Long Beach. “Hitler kept saying: ‘They’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people.’ And that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.”Responding to a question submitted at the UCLA talk, Clinton said she was not making a direct comparison although Russia’s actions were “reminiscent” of claims Germany made in the 1930s when the Nazis said they needed to protect German minorities in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.“The claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities, that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe,” she said.“I just want everybody to have a little historic perspective. I am not making a comparison, certainly. But I am recommending that we perhaps can learn from this tactic that has been used before.”Clinton said Putin was trying to “re-Sovietise” the periphery of Russia but was actually squandering the potential of his nation and “threatening instability and even the peace of Europe.”In recent days some Republicans, including Senator John McCain, have criticised the Obama administration’s policy in Ukraine. Clinton echoed Barack Obama’s assessment that Russia’s intervention was a violation of international law and said she supported the administration’s call for Russia “to refrain from the threat or use of force”.Kathryn Stoner, a Russia expert at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said she considered Clinton’s comparison between Putin and the tactics of Nazi-era Germany “a bit of a stretch”, in part because Putin “doesn’t look like he is intent on spreading across the Ukraine and permanently occupying this area”.“I don’t think it’s helpful on either side to say things like this, but in these crises it happens,” Stoner said. |