According to Russia Today TV (RT)**11**, Ukraine** Zelensky's former military adviser Alexeiy Arestovich (Oleksiy Arestovych) said in a recent interview with the United Kingdom ** that it is time for Ukraine to start thinking about peace talks with Russia.
British iNews** released an interview with Arestovych on December 8. The report mentioned that in the first few months after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Arestovych gave an optimistic assessment of the prospects of Ukraine every day, and recently announced that he would fight for the Ukrainian throne with the end of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as his election platform.
Alexei Arestovych Source: Office of Ukraine.
In an interview in New York, the 48-year-old accused Zelensky of mishandling the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and said he agreed with the assessment of the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Zaluzhny that the conflict had reached a "stalemate." Arestovich believes that this is the result of a mistake in decision-making at the top, which included paying a very high price to defend **Mutter.
Arestovych believes that the strengthening of the defense in **mut weakened the forces of the Ukrainian army in the southern region, which did not allow it to make significant progress in breaking through the Russian defenses. "We had the potential to make real gains in the South," he said, "and one of the main mistakes was to treat Mutter as a political PR project, declaring it a fortress and spending a lot of troops and lives defending it — and now it's just a small rock on a hill." ”
In the interview, Arestovich also talked about the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in which he was personally involved. According to him, after Russia withdrew its troops from the perimeter of Kyiv in the spring of 2022, Ukraine was in a more advantageous position in the negotiations at that time, suggesting that then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have sabotaged the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations.
Arestovych claimed that initially the Russian side made many demands, such as Ukraine's abandonment of NATO membership and the downsizing of its army, but "after every failed attempt to attack Kyiv", the Russian side withdrew one demand in the negotiations. However, when Johnson visited Ukraine in early April 2022, the Russian-Ukrainian negotiation process came to an abrupt halt. "We still don't know if it was Johnson's influence on (Zelensky), or a decision, or someone else's influence that caused the negotiations to break down," he said.
According to the report, Johnson's spokesman denied the claim, saying that "Ukraine's decision to (continue) the fight has nothing to do with Johnson, but with the iron determination of Zelensky and the Ukrainian people."
In the interview, Arestovych also harshly criticized the role of the "collective West" in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, arguing that although the United States and Britain tend to provide military support to Ukraine, it is only to achieve the goal of weakening Russia, and will not allow Ukraine to win militarily. At the same time, the United States and Britain have failed to close the loopholes in Western sanctions, causing Russia to "rain cruise missiles over our heads."
The former Ukrainian adviser pointed out that all these "seemingly failures" have prompted Ukraine to urgently open a new path. Like many Western analysts, he expressed concern that Russia currently has the upper hand on the battlefield. The report quoted some assessments that the Russian army is currently on the offensive in most parts of the front line, and the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdeyevka may be surrounded.
With the number of people and economic losses caused by the conflict on the rise, Arestovich believes that it is time to discuss a negotiated end to the conflict. "The positive goals of both sides (of Russia and Ukraine) have been lost, and now there are only negative goals," he said. For Russia, it's for Ukraine not to join NATO, and for us it's for stopping the war. These are excellent conditions for a real discussion, not only between Ukraine and Russia, but also about the new European system of collective security. ”
Arestovich believes that the public ** is turning to support the end of the fighting, and the morale of the Ukrainian army at the front has declined. He claimed that desertion had become a growing concern. He fears that Ukraine's energy network could be attacked again this winter, and that any territorial losses could further dampen the morale of the Ukrainian public.
Arestovych said that after the defeat of the first in the summer of this year, the goal of the Ukrainian army to regain control of all the territory of Ukraine using available resources is no longer realistic, "I say to people, if none of our armed forces can advance to Tokmak, 20 kilometers south (of the front line), how can you want to restore the borders of 1991?".”
In January this year, an apartment building in Dnipro, Ukraine, was damaged, and Arestovych said that it may have been caused by the Russian missile being shot down by the Ukrainian air defense, for which he was strongly attacked by Ukraine, and finally apologized and announced his resignation. Alexei Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's defense committee, has hinted that Arestovych is a Russian spy and said that the Ukrainian security agencies are dealing with matters related to this person. Politicians from Ukraine's ruling party also called for the arrest of Arestovych.