Hillary Clinton: 'Putin Has an Almost Messianic Belief in Himself’

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an international audience in the UK that Russian President Vladimir Putin has an “almost messianic belief in himself.”

He’s bent on “restoring imperial Russia,” she said.

Clinton issued the criticism at the Hay festival, a literature and art event hosted annually in Wales.

Clinton did not miss the opportunity to blame everyone but herself for losing to President Donald Trump in 2016. 

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It’s a theme that’s been on repeat for years, and again on Friday, she told the audience:

“Putin does not like critics, especially women critics,” she said.

“Putin then became very adversarial toward me with few exceptions.

"As we know, despite efforts to say to the contrary, he worked very hard to get Trump elected through all kinds of means," Clinton said.

Clinton’s bitterness has now evolved to Putin apparently not liking women.

The twice-failed presidential candidate pivoted to recalling a prior “positive” working relationship with the Russian leader, according to The Guardian:

Clinton recalled that she “had some positive developments” working closely with Putin between 2009 and 2013 when he was prime minister of Russia, but the relationship soured when she criticized the “blatantly crooked” elections, which returned him to the presidency in 2012.

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But after these positive years of “working closely,” - Putin supposedly turned to not liking women critics, after which he “became very adversarial” to Clinton - which is what led to her losing the presidential bid, in her telling of it.

Her comments included a brief assessment of the Ukraine conflict, suggesting that Russia had been thwarted in its broader war aims:

Clinton said in a clip Hay Festival posted on its Facebook page that one of the issues with regimes like Putin’s is leaders are often told what they want to hear instead of the reality of a situation, leading to Putin’s faulty expectations for the war.

“Putin was told that he could get to Kyiv in three days and install a puppet government, and he could basically control Ukraine,” she said.

“That’s what he was told, and it turned out to be, thankfully, wrong.”

She further said she wants to see an international war crimes tribunal convict Putin and top Russian officials for crimes against humanity, but admitted that it’s “always difficult to go after a head of state.”

“When he invaded Ukraine I was sadly not surprised. I was very pleasantly surprised at how effective the government of [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy and Ukraine defended themselves,” she added.

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