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Hillary Clinton speaks on Russian President Vladimir Putin in an appearance at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Washington: Potential Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday tried to clarify comments that left the impression she had compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Ms Clinton, as President Barack Obama's secretary of state in his first term, was a key player in a US effort to reset relations with Russia, a policy that critics say now appears to be a glaring failure.

On Tuesday, Ms Clinton had said Mr Putin's incursion into the Crimea region of southern Ukraine was akin to moves Hitler made in the years before World War Two.

Hillary Clinton recently compared Vladimir Putin's tactics in the Ukraine to those used by Adolf Hitler before World War II. Photo: AP

Mr Putin justified sending forces into Crimea by saying he wanted to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which Ms Clinton said was similar to Hitler's vow to protect ethnic Germans in eastern Europe.

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The Long Beach Press-Telegram quoted Clinton as telling a private fundraiser in California: "Now if this sounds familiar, it's what Hitler did back in the '30s."

"All the Germans that were, you know, the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they're not being treated right. I must go and protect my people, and that's what's gotten everybody so nervous," she said.

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Hillary Clinton clarifies Putin-Hitler comparison