Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov apologized on Monday for his day-old claims when he compared the losses of the country’s armed forces to the number of people killed in the earthquakes that hit Turkey.

“I sincerely apologize to everyone in Ukraine or Turkey who was offended by my comments in an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Razon. Ukraine sympathizes with the Turkish people. We understand what it’s like to hide thousands of innocent people – friends and neighbors,” he wrote on his Facebook page on Monday. Twitter.

“I am grateful to our Turkish friends for their steadfast support and firm stance on Crimea since the beginning of the Russian invasion,” he added, referring to the Ankara government’s demand that Russia withdraw from Crimea, a position taken in a context in which the peninsula’s Tatar minority has a favorable attitude towards Ukraine.

“The return of Crimea to Ukraine, of which it is an inseparable part, is an important requirement of international law. Turkey does not recognize the annexation of Crimea and from the first day openly declares that this step (annexation) is illegitimate and illegal. This is a principled position that has not only legal, but also moral foundations,” Turkish President Recep Erdogan recalled in August last year.

What did the Minister of Defense of Ukraine say about the losses suffered by its Armed Forces

In an interview published in Spanish media at the end of last week, Reznikov stated that the losses among the Ukrainian military during the war were less than the number of victims of the earthquake in Turkey.

“Of course, we have losses because we have a war. But they are much smaller than Russian losses. I can’t give a number, but I can assure you that the total number is less than the number of people killed in the earthquake in Turkey,” he said during an interview.

“This means that our main goal is to save the lives of our soldiers, and Russia uses them as cannon fodder. This is a meat grinder tactic. They don’t care. In Bakhmut alone, Russia loses 500 people killed and wounded every day,” the Minister of Defense of Ukraine added.

According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Russia suffered total casualties of 189,500–223,000, including 35,500–43,000 killed in action and 154,000–180,000 wounded.

On February 6, two earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 occurred in the southeast of Turkey and Syria. The confirmed death toll from the destruction in both countries exceeded 50,000.

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