Czechs offer job to critic of Russian intervention

PRAGUE (AP) — A Czech university has offered a job to a Russian historian and professor of philosophy who was fired from a Moscow university after comparing Russia's intervention in Ukraine to Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia before World War II.

Professor Andreyi Zubov was sacked from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations after his critical remarks on Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula were published by the daily Vedomosti.

The West has denounced the Russian move as illegal.

The Masaryk University in Brno says Zubov was offered a professor position at its Faculty of Social Studies.

In a statement Friday, rector Mikulas Bek said Czechs are sensitive to what happened because "the generations of our teachers had their careers destroyed only because they criticized the state."