Sen. John McCain warned that the United States and Europe should avoid allowing Russia to set a precedent in Ukraine that could be later used for an incursion into Poland.  

“If Vladimir Putin gets away with saying he’s defending the rights of Russian speaking peoples, that is the same thing — excuse that Hitler used,” the Arizona Republican said, invoking arguments made by Nazi Germany about the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland.  

McCain has long been among the Senate’s most strident critics of Putin , repeatedly criticizing the Obama administration’s views about the Russian president.  

“There are … Russian-speaking people in Poland. There’s … Russian speaking-people in Romania,” McCain said. “There’s plenty of places where he may feel he has to intervene … on behalf of Russian-speaking people.”