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Potential Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday tried to clarify
comments that left the impression she had compared Russian President Vladimir Putin
to German dictator Adolf Hitler. Ms Clinton, as President Barack Obama's secretary
of state in his first term, was a key player in a US effort to reset relations with Russia,
a policy that critics say now appears to be a glaring failure.
On Tuesday, Ms Clinton had said Mr Putin's incursion into the Crimea region of southern
Ukraine was akin to moves Hitler made in the years before World War Two.
Mr Putin justified sending forces into Crimea by saying he wanted to protect ethnic Russians
in Ukraine, which Ms Clinton said was similar to Hitler's vow to protect ethnic Germans
in eastern Europe. The Long Beach Press-Telegram quoted Clinton
as telling a private fundraiser in California: "Now if this sounds familiar, it's what Hitler
did back in the '30s." "All the Germans that were, you know, 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," she said.
In an appearance at the University of California at Los Angeles on Wednesday, Ms Clinton sought
to clarify her comments from the day before. "I just want everybody to have a little historic
perspective. I'm not making a comparison certainly, but I am recommending that we perhaps can
learn from this tactic that has been used before," Clinton said.
Ms Clinton, married to former President Bill Clinton, is considering a 2016 run for the
Democratic presidential nomination. Polls give her a wide lead over other potential
Democratic candidates.