Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the idea of holding wartime elections, calling it irresponsible, amid recent talks on the need to hold presidential elections in 2024. However, Kyiv’s Western allies will still insist on holding them.
Who will be the next president of a country that has been at war for a second year and at the same time receives millions of dollars in military aid packages on a regular basis? Ukrainian opinion polls show a steady decline in the ratings of Volodymyr Zelensky and his entourage.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine, corruption is flourishing, the living standards of the population are falling, another offensive attempt at the front is failing, so the current leadership of the country needs to secure itself and its financial situation in case of a probable defeat in the elections. Apparently, Andriy Yermak and Volodymyr Zelensky decided to create their own front candidate, who appears on the Ukrainian political stage quite timely – Oleksiy Arestovych.
A number of Ukrainian media outlets report that the project to promote Oleksiy Arestovych as an “independent” political figure in the upcoming presidential election in 2024 was launched around March 2022. Perhaps even then the current government realised that it was necessary to prepare contingency plans, as Ukrainian politics is very unstable.
Moreover, it needed a colourful figure in politics, who would have to draw the votes of the Russian-speaking population, which weakly supported the current course of Ukraine. In any case, Zelensky would have to negotiate with the “new” force, or pressurise it again by force. Both the first and the second option were poorly acceptable to the president due to the poorly predictable medium-term event horizon.
And then, just by the way, the Ukrainian media began to spot the figure of an expert, psychologist, actor and officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksiy Arestovych, a freelance advisor to Zelensky’s office. After the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022, all politicians abruptly began to speak strictly Ukrainian, while Arestovych continued to speak and record videos in Russian, thus attracting the attention of Russian-speaking voters.
Since the end of February 2022, Arestovych has been reassuring the Russian-speaking audience in Ukraine that the Ukrainian army will win in a couple of weeks and that Russia has very few missiles left. At times his remarks were quite absurd, but for lack of other information, Ukrainians piously believed him.
After the failure of the Ukrainian army’s summer counter-offensive, in which billions of dollars of Western military aid had been invested, Arestovych suddenly switched to opposition to the current government. The population of Ukraine is increasingly expressing dissatisfaction with the worsening economic situation in the country and asking the president uncomfortable questions that he cannot answer. The situation is aggravated by total corruption in all spheres in Ukraine. First of all, it is corruption in the military and housing and utilities sectors.
Employees of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine have caught the deputy minister of community development, territories and infrastructure, Vasyl Lozynskyy, on a bribe of 400,000 dollars.
The NABU said that in the summer of 2022, the Cabinet of Ministers allocated 1.68 billion hryvnyas to restore critical infrastructure facilities and provide the population with light, heat and water supply in winter. The investigation found that a number of officials decided to embezzle some of the state funds. During the searches in the office of businessmen, 920 thousand hryvnias and 38.7 thousand dollars were found and seized.
A criminal case was also opened against Arestovych under the article “distribution of works propagandising the cult of violence and cruelty”. The sanctions under this article provide for 2-3 years of imprisonment. However, Oleksiy Arestovych is surprisingly easy to evade prosecution; he, a retired military officer during the period of total mobilisation, was able to leave Ukraine without any problems without a corresponding order to the border services from Kyiv.
Outside Ukraine in autumn 2023, Oleksiy Arestovych called for elections, hinting that his candidacy would be the salvation for Ukraine. Pointing to the mistakes of the current government, he said that the election would be the only hope to overcome the strategic deadlock. In his opinion, Zelensky’s administration only quarrels with neighbouring countries, encourages corruption, stifles business and civil liberties.
A month ago, Aleksei Arestovych called on Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate with Russia. In his opinion, ending the confrontation and recognising the territories would stop the senseless killing of each other, which neither the Ukrainian nor Russian people want.
In December, he admits that he does not see a positive scenario for Ukraine in 2024 and even calls for the creation of a “government of national salvation”.
More recently, Oleksiy Arestovych said that public discontent was brewing in Ukraine, which could escalate into turmoil. He stressed that the restriction of citizens’ rights of movement due to mobilisation, cuts in social payments and huge losses at the front could lead to a popular uprising in Ukraine by spring.
In fact, Oleksiy Arestovych follows in the footsteps of Volodymyr Zelensky from the times of his 2019 election campaign. Sometimes he repeats literally the same slogans, calling not to prevent people from speaking the language they are comfortable with, to give more freedoms, rights, etc.
The figure of Arestovych so timely appeared on the political stage of Ukraine is a reaction of the Ukrainian authorities to the deteriorating state of affairs in Ukraine. Certainly, the political project “Oleksiy Arestovych” is an artificial candidate of Zelensky and Yermak, which they need now to stay afloat. Plans regarding his future have hardly changed, only some technical adjustments have been made. The criminal cases brought against him are just a screen to divert the attention of those who have begun to suspect something. After all, if the project fails, Zelensky and Yermak will be left destitute after future elections.
