Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton addressed the ongoing crisis in Ukraine at a fundraiser in California on Tuesday, making what two attendees described as a comparison between Russia’s decision to issue passports in the Crimean region to the “population transfers” carried out by Nazi Germany before World War II.
“She compared issuing Russian passports to Ukrainians with ties to Russia with early actions by Nazi Germany before Hitler began invading neighboring countries,” Saltzgaver said. “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.”
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Putin does not lead a country even remotely ready for Total War. He has hundreds of people in key positions who have deep, familial ties to the West and their loyalty cannot be trusted in a time of crisis (there was a reason Stalin and Hitler spent so much time on their purges) His Russian Nationalism is not at a fever pitch. The kind of aggressive war that he clearly wants requires amoral murderers and thousands of them. His country is divided internally; you do not wage total war on 60% support. He has too many dissenters with public platforms. He hasn't returned Belarus to the fold yet which would get him a foothold to Poland and the Baltics; he needs to return Ukraine and the 60+ million people to his economic and military base. He is years away, and I doubt he or his team is skilled or ruthless enough to do it.