Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said he has fired his country's honorary consul in Turkey for wearing a t-shirt with a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a line of text referring to Moscow's annexation of Crimea.
The former honorary consul, Levent Aydin, a Turkish citizen, has “done a lot to help Ukrainian citizens, but this is a matter of principle,” Klimkin said via Twitter Monday night. “I've decided to end his tenure as an honorary consul.”
Aydin prompted an outcry on social networks and garnered some media coverage in Russia for appearing at a soccer presentation in Antalya earlier this month, wearing a t-shirt imprinted with the likeness of the Russian leader and a line that read: “Politeness is everything for us.”
The words are an allusion to the Kremlin loyalists' nickname for the Russian forces that overran Crimea ahead of Moscow's annexation last spring. The men, who wore uniforms without insignia, were dubbed “polite people.”