In the aftermath of Tuesday's Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, said that such violence "should not happen anywhere," The Hill reports.
Expressing Ukraine's condolences to the American people, Markarova described the mass shooting as a "horrible tragedy," in which at least 19 children and two adults were killed by an 18-year-old gunman on Tuesday.
The elementary school included second, third and fourth grades.
"This should not happen anywhere," Markarova said. "It should not happen in the U.S. and it should not happen in Ukraine."
"For us, the pain of losing children, especially of that age, is something we live for the past 90 days nonstop, and our condolences go to the American people. This cycle of hate and brutal shooting and shooting children and civilians in general, should be stopped."
Markarova briefly spoke with reporters before delivering remarks at the American Jewish Committee’s Diplomatic Seder, where she expressed gratitude to the assembled diplomats and the American Jewish community for supporting Ukraine as it enters the fourth month of its defensive conflict with Russia.
Hundreds of Ukrainian children are thought to have been killed as Russian forces have allegedly increasingly targeted civilians during the Kremlin’s unprovoked invasion of the former Soviet country.
Markarova tweeted later that losing children "to gun violence in peaceful time is a tragedy beyond understanding."
"Ukraine knows too well the horror of growing number of lost children," she said. "And our prayers are with those who lost their loved ones to the horrible crime in the elementary school of Uvalde, Texas."
Responding to her tweet, one user thanked the ambassador for her show of solidarity.
"Thank you," the user wrote. "In the midst of fending off genocide itself, that you have the strength, compassion & empathy for what happened in that school, is immense itself."
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