4/17/2023 – | Last updated: 4/17/2023 10:59 PM (Makkah)
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov apologized to Turkey for comparing the victims of the war in Ukraine with the victims of the earthquake that struck southern Turkey more than two months ago.
"Ukrainians sympathize with the Turkish people," Reznikov said in a tweet on the social networking site Twitter today, Monday.
The minister wrote in his tweet that Ukrainians understand the meaning of burying thousands of innocent friends and neighbors.
The Ukrainian minister added, "I am very grateful to our Turkish friends for their unwavering support and firm stance on Crimea since the start of the Russian invasion," as he put it.
The apology came against the backdrop of Reznikov's statement, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper "La Razon" earlier, that the losses of the Ukrainian army were less than the number of people killed in the earthquake in Turkey.
It is noteworthy that more than 50,000 people died as a result of the Kahramanmaraş earthquake, which struck southern Turkey and parts of northern Syria in early February.
The two parties to the war in Ukraine are issuing statistics that speak of tens of thousands of deaths from the other side, without it being possible to confirm them from an independent source, but both parties acknowledge that there have been heavy losses in their ranks as a result of the fighting that has been going on for more than 13 months.
