'Mrs. Clinton talked at length on the situation in the Ukraine,' one attendee says. Report: Clinton compares Russia to Nazi Germany

Hillary Clinton, in some of her first comments on the evolving crisis in Ukraine, compared Russia’s move to issue passports in Crimea to “population transfers” in pre-World War II Germany, according to a report late Tuesday.

The remarks at an event in Southern California by Clinton, who generally has shied away from public discussion of foreign policy issues since she left the State Department in early 2013, were first reported by BuzzFeed, quoting people who attended the speech.


Clinton referenced the passports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been issuing to people with Russian ties in Crimea, according to reports.

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“Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ‘30s,” Clinton said, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, which had a reporter covering the otherwise closed-press event and later posted a story. “All the Germans that were … 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.”

“Mrs. Clinton talked at length on the situation in the Ukraine,” Harry Saltzgaver, executive editor of a Long Beach newspaper group, told Buzzfeed earlier.

Both Saltzgaver and a second fundraiser attendee, who requested anonymity, described Clinton’s parallel between the actions of Putin and Adolf Hitler, who resettled tens of thousands of ethnic Germans in Eastern and Central Europe to Nazi Germany.

“She compared issuing Russian passports to Ukrainians with ties to Russia with early actions by Nazi Germany before Hitler began invading neighboring countries,” Saltzgaver added. “She said, however, that while that makes people nervous, there is no indication that Putin is as irrational as the instigator of World War II.”

“She talked about how what Putin is doing now is similar to what Hitler did, essentially providing these ethnic Russians in the Crimea region access back to Russia,” a second attendee told BuzzFeed. “And that it was destabilizing.”

The event was a $1,500-a-head fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach. It was not open to the media at large.

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Clinton talked about her experience with that region “both regarding Putin’s attitude of wanting to put Mother Russia back together, and the pressure put on the Ukrainian president not to sign agreements with the European Union,” Saltzgaver told the website.

Clinton spokesmen did not respond to two emails requesting comment.

The situation in Ukraine is still developing, and Clinton, according to the report, offered no comment on the path forward.

Clinton’s relationship with Putin has been tumultuous. In 2009, she presented Russia’s foreign minister with a “reset” button that was meant to signify the rebooting of the relationship between Russia and the United States but was inscribed with the wrong word. She was deeply critical of Putin, however, during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Putin accused Clinton of egging on opposition protests in 2011, amid increasing tensions surrounding the uprisings in the Mideast.