Former adviser to the President of Ukraine, Oleksiy Arestovych, announced that he will run against President Volodymyr Zelenskyi in the elections to be held next year, reports Interfax-Ukraine.

“Yes, I will nominate myself,” he replied after being approached by reporters from the Interfax news agency to ask about it. Interfax asked him about a possible candidacy in the presidential elections after Arestovych he published published a number of proposals for political, economic, social, military and other reforms on his social media accounts on Wednesday.

He confirmed that these proposals will form the basis of his pre-election program. “It will be refined by experts, I made it public to start a discussion. Objections, opinions, advice, criticism are welcome,” said Zelenskyi’s former adviser.

One of his proposals is for Ukraine to accept the “Kissinger option” in negotiations with the West: “we demand membership in NATO with the obligation not to return the territories occupied at the time of accession, and to return them only by political methods,” he said. . explained

“At the front, we are moving to strategic defense. We are changing the recruitment policy of the Armed Forces to emphasize human life and the development of specialists. We are changing the mobilization system: we are introducing the preparation of the reserve for prevention and the rotation of the mobilized. We allow men to leave the country on the condition that they return if called up,” he also suggests.

Why Zelenskyi’s former adviser resigned

Arestovych was an adviser to the President of Ukraine on strategic communication in the field of national security from December 1, 2020 to January 17 of this year, when he resigned due to a scandal.

“I wrote a resignation letter. I want to show an example of civilized behavior: a fundamental mistake, then resign,” he said on Twitter at the time.

He tendered his resignation just 3 days after a Russian missile attack on a residential building in Dnipro, which killed 44 people, he claimed that the missile was shot down by Ukrainian air defense forces but landed on the residential building.

“I offer my sincere apologies to the victims and their relatives, the residents of Dnipro and everyone who was deeply affected by my premature and erroneous version of why a Russian missile hit a residential building,” he said at the time of his resignation.

His statement after the missile strike was immediately picked up by Moscow propaganda and Russian officials, including Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov, and sparked public outrage in Ukraine. A day later, Arestovych explained his position in more detail, noting that he was “tired” when he made the comment during a YouTube interview with former Russian lawyer Mark Feigin.

Arestovych became one of the most famous Ukrainian officials after the start of the Russian invasion, tasked with presenting the events at the front to the general public. Until his resignation, he hosted a daily podcast on this topic, being Zelenskyi’s adviser with the greatest popularity among the Ukrainian public.

He is also known to Ukrainians for declaring the inevitability of war with Russia back in 2019.

But after leaving the presidential office in Kyiv, he gradually became one of Zelensky’s fiercest critics.

Oleksiy Arestovych, suspected of being one of the “moles” of Time magazine.

“This article condemns Zelensky to loneliness, and the judgment of history to a loneliness for which he has no one to blame but himself,” Arestovych wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday, referring to a Time magazine report on pessimism. among the leadership in Kyiv.

“No matter how much you deny reality, it doesn’t go away. One of the stages of this denial of reality is attempts to blame the damned Shusters for everything, instead of looking at themselves,” he added. The article in Time magazine was signed by the famous American reporter Simon Shuster.

After the Time magazine publication, some Ukrainian journalists accused Arestovych of being one of the anonymous people who made provocative comments about Shuster.

“He is deceiving himself. I’ve run out of options. We won’t win. But try to tell him that,” one of the sources reported, citing Zelensky’s reluctance to enter into any peace or truce negotiations with Moscow.

Shuster noted in the article that it is about “one of Zelenskyi’s closest advisers.”

Violent attacks by a former Ukrainian official

Asked about this by Interfax reporters, Arestovici denied the report on Wednesday, saying he had not spoken to the American journalist since last August, as the report published by Time was based on recent interviews.

In early October, in a separate interview with the Polish website Onet, he made a series of sharp attacks on Zelensky, saying, among other things, that the deterioration of relations between Kyiv and Warsaw due to disagreements over the export of Ukrainian grain occurred solely because of the Ukrainian president.

“This deterioration is a consequence of President Zelensky’s narcissism and the President of Ukraine’s excessive concern for the interests of business groups working in agriculture,” he accused.

“There are many questions for President Zelensky, for example, the issue of preparing for war, mistakes in the way it was conducted, or why we lost the south of the country,” said Oleksiy Arestovych.

As a rule, presidential elections in Ukraine should be held next spring, but current legislation does not allow them to be held during martial law. “Interfax” agency notes that there is a public debate in Ukraine regarding a possible change in the law.

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