“The truth is that a Trump victory in November would be a gift to Vladimir Putin," Madeleine Albright said. | Getty Albright suggests Russia engineered DNC email hack to help Trump

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Tuesday said Vladimir Putin wants Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton and suggested Russia was likely behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee's emails.

“The truth is that a Trump victory in November would be a gift to Vladimir Putin, and given what we've learned about Russia's recent actions, Putin is eager to see Trump win,” Albright said in an apparent reference to accusations that Russia had a hand in hacking the email accounts of top DNC officials.


Albright's suggestion came as part of a larger Democratic National Convention address, in which she pressed the case for Clinton, saying her foreign policy would prove superior to Trump's.

Madeleine Albright's full remarks at the DNC Madeleine Albright's full remarks at the DNC on Tuesday.

Albright invoked her own personal history as a native of the former Czechoslovakia to lambast Trump’s warm attitude toward Putin.

“Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain. I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light,” she said.

Clinton campaign officials have openly accused the Russian president of engineering the hack to help Trump, who has praised Putin as a “strong” leader in the past. “What’s disturbing to us is that experts are telling us Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually of helping Donald Trump,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Sunday on CNN.