Clinton compares Putin moves with Hitler’s

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has compared Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent steps in Ukraine to aggression by Adolf Hitler in 1930s Nazi Germany, a local paper reported.

Clinton, speaking at a private event in southern California, said Putin’s apparent deployment of Russian troops into neighbouring Ukraine — a former Soviet satellite state — to protect Russian citizens and Russian-speakers recalls moves by Hitler to protect ethnic Germans living outside of Germany.

The Long Beach Press Telegram said Clinton noted that Putin has sought to provide Russian passports to people in Ukraine with ties to Russia.

In the aftermath of the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych, Kiev’s new authorities have accused Putin of inflaming tensions by sending troops into Crimea, a majority-Russian peninsula.

“If this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s,” the Press Telegram quoted Clinton as telling attendees at a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Long Beach, California. “The ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, 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.”