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Hillary: Russia’s tactics like Nazi Germany

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday compared Vladimir Putin’s Russia to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a scathing attack on the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

The ex-secretary of state and likely 2016 presidential candidate specifically lashed out at Russia’s plan to issue passports to ethnic Russians in Crimea.

“Now, if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ‘30s,” Clinton said during a California fundraiser on Tuesday.

“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,” she said, according to The Long Beach Press-Telegram.

The local paper had a reporter at the $1,500-a-head fundraiser for the Long Beach Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach. The event was closed to other media.

Clinton noted that Secretary of State John Kerry had been in Kiev and that Russia had agreed to meet with NATO officials in Brussels. Kerry was in Paris on Wednesday for a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister.

“So everybody is hoping that there will be a negotiation but a negotiation that respects Ukraine and doesn’t ratify a reoccupation by Russia of Crimea. So it’s a real nail-biter, right now, but nobody wants to up the rhetoric.

John Kerry is in Paris on Wednesday to meet with Russia’s foreign minister.Reuters

“Everybody wants to cool it in order to find a diplomatic solution and that’s what we should be trying to do,” she said.

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

“She compared issuing Russian passports to Ukrainians with ties to Russia with early actions by Nazi Germany before Hitler began invading neighboring countries. 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,” Saltzgaver said

“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,” another person who was there told BuzzFeed. “And that it was destabilizing.”

The former first lady also spoke about “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 said.

Vladimir Putin (center) and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (left) watch military exercises near St. Petersburg on Monday./Getty Images

Clinton spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Politico reported Wednesday.

Clinton as secretary of state had a rocky relationship with the Russian strongman, and harshly criticized his record as Russia’s president during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Putin is no fan of Hillary’s, either, having accused her in the past of trying to stir up opposition to Russia during the “Arab Spring” uprisings in the Middle East.