Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “tough guy with a thin skin” who was “squandering the potential” of his country.
“I know that his political vision is of a greater Russia,” she told students at the University of California at Los Angeles. “I said when I was still secretary that his goal is to re-Sovietize Russia’s periphery, but in the process he is squandering the potential of such a great nation, the nation of Russia, and threatening instability and even the peace of Europe.”
Clinton also clarified that she wasn’t “making a comparison” to Hitler when she likened Putin’s intervention in Ukraine to actions taken by Nazi Germany in the 1930s.