Substitute Teacher Suspended For Telling Students That He Supports Putin's Decision To Invade Ukraine

A substitute teacher from Virginia Public school district has been suspended for telling his students that he supports Russian President Vladimir Putin for his decision to invade Ukraine, district officials said.

John Stanton, 65, who teaches at Arlington Public Schools (APS), has been suspended for commenting on the Ukraine invasion during an eighth-grade Spanish class on Feb.25. The decision has been based on "an allegation of comments made to students during instructional hours regarding sensitive world events with Russia and Ukraine," APS said in a letter Tuesday, The Hill reported.

However, Stanton admitted that the remarks were made in class when discussing the recent international developments with students while urging them to read as many different news sources as possible.

"The statement I think that got me was I said, ‘I personally support the logic of Putin,’ and what I meant by that is, he made a rational decision from his perception," Stanton said, as reported by NY Post.

Stanton previously worked with Sputnik News, Russia's state-owned news agency, as a reporter until he was fired from the job in 2018 for allegedly providing information about the outlet to an unnamed third-party source. Stanton claimed that the client to which he passed the information was a U.S. government intelligence agency, he told the Washington Post.

However, Stanton continues to write for other Russian news outlets like Pravda, which formerly served as an official publication for the Soviet Union.

The school district officials said Stanton would be eligible to apply for reinstatement in five days, but Stanton said he would not be applying for one.

Stanton has been working as a substitute teacher for the past three years and has been appointed after the mandatory background checks like other employees, Arlington Public Schools spokesman Frank Bellavia said Thursday.

The investigation began after the parents of one student complained to the school about the comments he made in the class. "He (Stanton) has been removed from the pool of subs that we pull from, at least for the remainder of the year," Bellavia said, adding that he is unaware of how the topic of Russia came up at the beginning of a Spanish class.

Meanwhile, Stanton said he does not regret the comments he made in the class and would continue to do that if it would help at least one student. "If I reached one student — and there was one student that told the kids ‘Be quiet,’ because he wanted to learn. If for one student that is the case, then I would do it again," Stanton added.