A substitute teacher in Virginia is out of the classroom after saying he supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, district officials confirmed Thursday.

John Stanton, 65, was suspended by Arlington Public Schools Tuesday due to comments he made during an eighth-grade Spanish class on Friday at Swanson Middle School, the Washington Post reported.

Stanton, a former journalist who previously worked for Russia’s state-owned Sputnik News, told the newspaper Tuesday he offered up his take during the first 10 minutes of the 90-minute class, urging students to read as many varied news sources as possible.

“I said, ‘Here’s what’s going on,’” Stanton recalled. “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.”

Arlington Public Schools spokesman Frank Bellavia, who declined to discuss Stanton’s employment status Tuesday, confirmed to The Post Thursday that Stanton will no longer work as a substitute for the district.

“He has been removed from the pool of subs that we pull from, at least for the remainder of the year,” Bellavia said during a brief interview. “At this point, it’s an HR thing — there’s not much more I can say.”

Bellavia declined to characterize Stanton’s remarks other than to confirm the accuracy of the account the now-suspended teacher gave earlier this week.

Stanton said he suggested students read outlets like Sputnik News, where he worked as a reporter in the nation’s capital from 2016 to 2018, the Washington Post reported. He was fired by Sputnik News for giving information about the news agency to a third-party client, according to PBS.org.

Stanton told the Washington Post the client was a US government intelligence agency, but declined to elaborate. A 2017 US intelligence report declared Sputnik News part of Russia’s “state-run propaganda machine,” the newspaper noted.

Stanton still writes for outlets like Pravda, a Russian newspaper that formerly served as the Soviet Union’s official publication.

Stanton penned a column for Pravda last month days after Russia invaded Ukraine, claiming it was “great news” for Western defense contractors, who stand to make billions in profits. He also noted the ongoing “media war” associated with the conflict.

“Who to believe?” Stanton wrote on Feb. 28. “It is getting tougher as alternate news sites like Sputnik News and RT News are being censored by the West. Any support aired by anyone on the West for the Russian position gets mauled and derided by pro-West pundits.”

Stanton also claimed “self-censorship” by Western media outlets will only “get more wicked” while suggesting the best way forward is to read as many Russian and Western news reports as possible.

“Relying on one source is not intelligent,” Stanton wrote.

Stanton was eligible to apply for reinstatement in five days, but he won’t be doing so, he told the Washington Post. He passed a background check like all other district employees and had been working as a substitute for three years, Bellavia confirmed Thursday.

The district spokesman said he was unsure how the topic of Russia came up at the beginning of a Spanish class.

But parents of one student got in touch with staffers at the school following Stanton’s unsolicited take on the war, according to an email obtained by the Washington Post that noted a Ukrainian student was also in his classroom.

“[Stanton] told students he supported Russia, asked whether anyone ‘hated Russia’ and complained about rising gas prices, presumably as an effect of the current crisis,” the email read.

Stanton, meanwhile, has no regrets, he told the Washington Post.

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“If I reached one student — and there was one student that told the kids ‘Be quiet,’ because he wanted to learn,” Stanton said. “If for one student that is the case, then I would do it again.”