Was Prince Charles Correct In Referring To Putin's Behaviour As Similar To Hitler's?

[DTCwordfan]

Putin has only got one ball,
the other is on the Kremlin wall
Stalin has something sim'lar,
But poor old Turchynov has no balls at all.

Was Charles right to have made the comment in that though it was supposedly a private remark, it was in a public place and picked up by the Press, aka the Daily Wail?

[anneasquith]

the palace/Charles will wiggle out of this, soon be a statement from the woman who may well say '' she might have misunderstood him '' :)

[Ken4155]

I don't believe Putin REALLY cares what Charles has said, but he has pounced on it and is using the remark for political reasons.

[Khandro]

// Which just makes him [Putin] look even sillier.//
From the way I look at things Putin doesn't look in the slightest bit silly, that honour goes to the West who should have been making friends not following America's lead and antagonizing him, now by the mismanagement of the whole affair he has, understandably signed away 30 years worth of clean energy to the Chinese, gas which could have come to Europe.
It might be worth looking at the map and see just how close eastern Ukraine, (and as some would have it therefore-NATO), is to Moscow to understand his concern.

[Ellipsis]

As Charles was on Canadian soil at the time, he made these remarks in the context of being heir to the throne of Canada - so it's really nothing to do with us. :D

I think he was unwise to make the comments in this clumsy way. He could have used a more formal channel to let his opinion be known.

[Hopkirk]

If Prince Charles seriously thinks he can ever have a 'private' conversation, then he isn't as intelligent as I thought he was. (except perhaps with his immediate family)

[ichkeria]

Putin is basically a thug. He is, of course, like Russian leaders before him, full of the complexes of his people to do with issues relating to their ethnicity (are we savage Asians or are we civilised Europeans) and the sense of insecurity around their borders. And those complexes make it very easy for an autocrat to rule with such a tight fist. In Putin's case his "tight fist" is primarily around the revenue from oil and other state enterprises which he has stolen from his own people.

All the talk of NATO encroaching on Russia's borders therefore is relevant only in so far as you think it is acceptable for the civilised world to sacrifice the aspirations of the peoples who live in the countries NATO has allegedly "encroached on" simply to indulge those complexes. What would be the point? It would only take us back to the bad old days of the Cold War. That's exactly where Putin would like to head, in the sense that he would love the US and EU to agree to a "hands off "approach to his "near abroad", creating a compliant buffer zone to protect KremlinMafia PLC.
Not surprisingly the people in Ukraine (even in the East though they may express it differently) don't want that, and it isn't really up to us to tell them to shut up and take it (quite apart from the fact that they wouldn't listen anyway)