Nancy Pelosi called Putin's invasion ofUkraine an "evil move" and compared his actions to those of Hitler.- "This is the Sudetenland," said Pelosi, referring to a region of Czechoslovakia that Hitler invaded before WWII.
"Many of us have visited Ukraine and have seen that they love democracy," Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference following her return from several countries overseas, including the United Kingdom and Germany. "They do not want to live under Vladimir Putin. He does not want the Russian people to see what democracy looks like. And therefore he wants to bring them under his domain."
Pelosi also made the case that Putin, by virtue of his background as a Russian intelligence officer, is particularly skilled at deceiving his own citizens.
"Putin is a master of KGB, KGB, KGB, KGB," Pelosi said, pounding the podium. "His orientation is misrepresentation, and he's effective at that, unless we inoculate against it, unless we make a case against it so that the Russian people know the truth."
She then went on to compare Putin's recognition of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine — two thirds of which are still controlled by Ukraine — to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939.
"This is a very evil move on the part of Vladimir Putin," she declared. "He's a KGB guy who happens to be probably the richest man in the world because of his exploitation of his own people that he doesn't want them to know about."
"This, my friends, is our moment," she added. "This is the Sudetenland, that's what people were saying there. You cannot ignore what Putin is doing."
She added that Putin's invasion is a "total assault on democracy."
—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 23, 2022
'Appeasement'
The Sudetenland is an area that was populated primarily by German speakers in Czechoslovakia (now broken up into Czechia and Slovakia).
After assuming power in 1933, Hitler threatened to spark a new war in Europe by demanding that the Sudetenland be ceded to Germany — largely on the basis of the fact it was populated by ethnic Germans. European powers eventually gave into Hitler's demands via the Munich Agreement in 1938, in what would ultimately be a failed bid to prevent another conflict from consuming the continent. The European leaders involved in the Munich discussions — particularly British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain — were accused of appeasement, and of being fooled by Hitler.
Nazi Germany would go on to invade the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, just months before the onset of World War II.
As he moved to recognize two separatist territories in eastern Ukraine as independent on Monday, Putin made references to the historical and ethnic connections between Ukraine and Russia. He rewrote history in the process, and effectively suggested that Ukraine is not a country. "Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia," Putin said.
In remarks at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alluded to the 1938 Munich crisis and the Sudetenland.
Zelensky suggested that Western leaders had engaged in "appeasement" in the face of Russian aggression toward Ukraine. "Has the world forgotten its mistakes of the 20th century?" Zelensky asked. "Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?"
Russia in 2014 invaded and annexed Crimea, and has since supported rebels in a war against Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region. Ukraine has been heavily reliant on Western aid during that timeframe. NATO countries have provided Ukraine with military assistance, including lethal aid. Meanwhile, NATO has stalled conversations on allowing Ukraine to join.
Though Ukraine is nowhere close to becoming a NATO member, its ambitions of joining the alliance are at the heart of the recent crisis with Russia. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine be permanently banned from NATO. But the alliance and Washington have repeatedly said that this demand is a non-starter.
In addition to recognizing separatist territories as independent, Russia on Monday said so-called "peacekeepers" would be sent into eastern Ukraine. President Joe Biden said this constitutes the "beginning of an invasion," while warning that Russia appeared poised to seize more Ukrainian territory by force.