7:19 PM PT -- Sergio's trying to clear up his statements ... saying he loves Nicki and Megan, and the comments he made during Minaj's IG Live were "taken the wrong way." He added he didn't mean to mock anyone, and apologized to those people he may have offended.

Nicki Minaj has a controversial ally in her war against Megan Thee Stallion ... Vogue's entertainment director.

Here's the deal ... Nicki took to Instagram Live Friday, to fire back after Meg seemed to diss NM and her husband Kenneth Petty on her new track "Hiss."

Tons of people were commenting on the vid ... including Sergio Kletnoy -- a user with almost 60k social media followers who's also Vogue's entertainment director.

Among his duties ... booking all celeb interviews and photo shoots for the mag and all its video franchises -- basically, saying he's the main point of contact for getting celebs to work with Vogue which makes his comments about Meg, a shooting victim, pretty dicey.

The ones we've seen ... a series of foot emojis, clearly in reference to MTS' shooting at the hands of Tory Lanez followed by "Not 'fragment foot' lol not even a whole foot?" Nicki called Megan a "bullet fragment foot bitch" during the session.

Another interesting note about these comments ... Nicki was on the cover of Vogue just two months ago -- which seems like it would've been set up by Kletnoy based on his duties -- and the duo have taken a pic together as well.

As we previously reported ... the two rappers have been going back and forth since the release of "Hiss" with Nicki even cracking a joke about Megan's mother who passed away in 2019.

We've reached out to Vogue for comment ... so far, no word back.