Andrei Zubov, a history professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, was fired today from his job for writing a piece earlier this month comparing Vladimir Putin’s desire to invade and annex his neighbors in the name of protecting ethnic Russians everywhere, to Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

Zubov’s op ed was titled “This has already happened,” or “This has already been.”

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty talked to Zubov about his piece:

We always make prognoses based on the assumption that the politician, even if selfish and cruel, is intelligent and rational. But what we are now witnessing is the behavior of a politician who has clearly lost his mind.

These actions are absurd because of [the possibility of international] sanctions and of the sharp economic downturn, which is causing the collapse of the Russian financial market. If this continues, it will lead to an impoverishment of the population in a matter of months and huge social protests....