FOLEY, Ala. — According to U.S. Congressman Bradley Byrne, the recent actions of Russia President Vladimir Putin are familiar.

“Vladimir Putin is following the same playbook as Adolf Hitler,” he told attendees of Tuesday’s South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce Leadership Lunch Series.

The district 1 representative cited Putin’s reason of protecting Russians by placing 80,000 military troops around the Eastern Ukranian border.

“Hitler said the same thing,” Byrne said.

The congressman used that example to express his concern over the state of the U.S. defenses.

“I’m very worried,” Byrne sad. “We are in a substantially weakened position around the world.”

He also touched on the situations in North Korea and China and the Middle East. And that the U.S.’s weakened state stems from the current U.S. administration’s plans to reduce its own military size “to lower than before World War I.”

Byrne offered a solution for potential wartime situations.

“There’s a way to avoid them,” he said, suggesting that as commander in chief, President Barack Obama take a firm stance.

“It’s time for him to stand up,” Byrne said.

He pointed to increasing military ships of navigable sizes that are being constructed along the Gulf Coast as a way to secure sensitive locations, such as in the Black Sea.

“That ship we’re making in Austal can get us there,” Byrne said. “We’ve got to do that all throughout our military to make our country strong.”

When asked by an audience member how he and other representatives from red-state regions defend against cutting military bases, Byrne said he works with leaders from other Southern states on the House and Services Committee.

“By working together, I think we’ve got a pretty good nucleus that’s going to stand up and say ‘we re not going to get pinched.”