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Oleksiy Arestovych

Amid controversies and speculations over the 2024 elections, Oleksiy Arestovych was a darling of the Great Mentioner. A former Zelensky adviser-turned-rival has been aroudn in Ukrainian politics, but he radically reinvented himself. Arestovych announced that he would run against his former boss, after criticising Zelensky over the slow pace of the counter-offensive.

Arestovich was born on 03 August 1975 in the city of Dedoplistskaro (Georgia). Oleksiy's father, Mykola Arestovych, was the head of the admissions committee at the National Defense Academy. There is no information online about the mother. He graduated from school No. 178 in Kyiv, immediately after the 11th grade he entered the Kyiv National University named after Taras Shevchenko (Faculty of Biology).

In 1993, he decided to leave his studies and entered the Kyiv Theater-Studio "Black Square". After some time, he entered the Odessa Institute of Ground Forces. At that time, he studied English, thanks to which he managed to get a diploma of a military translator. From 1994 to 2005, he was a reserve major in the Main Directorate of Intelligence.

From 1993 to 2000, Oleksiy Arestovich worked as an actor in the studio "Black Square", starred in commercials, films, TV series. In particular, he played secondary roles in "Don't be afraid, I'm here", "Brother for Brother-2", "Return of Mukhtar". In 2007, Arestovych co-organized the company "Aegis Artist Group", which was engaged in the production of films. In 2013, he took part in the show "Teach Us to Live" (ITV TV channel). There he acted as a host and family psychologist.

In 2003, Oleksiy Arestovich began studying at the author's school of the Russian psychologist Avesalom Podvodny "Man Among People". He graduated after 7 years (in 2010). Arestovych also studied at the Kyiv Institute of St. Thomas Aquinas, where he studied theology.

In 2005, he joined the "Brotherhood" party and became the deputy chairman of Dmytro Korchynskyi. At that time, he opposed the Orange Revolution and participates in the conferences of the "International Eurasian Movement" of Oleksandr Dugin. In 2009, he organized (together with Dmytro Korchynskyi) the citizens' initiative "Get everyone away". She faced an important task: to ensure that the authorities solve the existing problems of small and medium-sized businesses.

Also in 2009, Oleksiy Arestovych became the deputy head of the Primorsky District Administration of the Odesa City Council. But after three months, he quits of his own accord. In October 2010, he was appointed by Leonid Kravchuk to the position of adviser on information policy. Arestovych began giving his first major interviews as a political expert immediately after the Revolution of Dignity. It is at that time that he also launched his social media and YouTube blogs.

In 2014, he began training combat units ("People's Reservist" program). He also organized a charity fund that provided psychological support to ATO participants. He also becomes the official spokesperson of the Ukrainian delegation in the Trilateral Contact Group at the negotiations in Minsk regarding the situation in the east of Ukraine and the settlement of the armed conflict.

In September 2018, Arestovych himself went to the OOS zone, where he served as a scout in the 872nd mechanized brigade in Kramatorsk. According to him, at that time he made 33 combat sorties into enemy territory. In the winter of 2020, he was appointed freelance adviser to the head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak on issues of strategic communications in the field of national security and defense, where he served as the "voice" of the Office of the President.

By the time the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Oleksiy Arestovych was already a prominent player on the turf of personal growth coaches. He had quite developed social networks, and his own website, on which various information products were available - seminars and lectures on a wide range of issues - from raising children to reading body language Then he managed to sell the courses of his "Apeiron School".

In February and March 2022, Arestovych began to appear frequently on the air of the nationwide marathon as the official speaker of the President's Office. His soothing intonation was a clear contrast against the general background of increased anxiety of the rest of the speakers and millions of Ukrainians.

Arestovych was often criticized for unconfirmed predictions and statements, and some of his promises such as "the war will last 2-3 weeks at most" became memes. But for almost a year, he got away with mistakes,

On 14 January 2023, Arestovych said in the "Feagin Live" program that the rocket that destroyed part of a house in Dnipro was allegedly shot down by air defense forces, it fell on a high-rise building and exploded. This statement was immediately picked up by Russian propagandists, passing it off as the official position of Ukraine.

On 15 January 2023, Arestovych retracted his apology and deleted a post on social networks explaining why he mistakenly said that a rocket destroyed a house in Dnipro after it was allegedly shot down by Ukrainian air defense. Arestovych also posted another post on social networks in which he provided a new version of his words. In the deleted post, he explained his statement about the supposed shooting down of a missile by Ukrainian air defense in the Dnipro with fatigue, lack of sleep and lack of time to verify information.

On 17 January 2023, he resigned from the position of freelance adviser to the head of the President's Office and from the position of speaker of the delegation of Ukraine to the TCG, however, according to the Office of the President, Arestovych did not sign the resignation letter and "perhaps this cooperation will be continued." On January 17, 2023, he wrote an application for dismissal from the position of adviser to the Office of the President. Subsequently, the Office of the President granted Arestovych's request for dismissal.

In September 2023, Arestovych ordered the State Bureau of Investigation to open criminal proceedings against People's Deputy Nataliya Pipa through the court. A minor street musician performed a song by the Russian rock musician Viktor Tsoi. Natalia Pipa, who was passing by, reacted to this. The musician reacted aggressively to her request to stop singing in the language of the occupier, so the deputy called the police. Law enforcement officers drew up an administrative report on minor hooliganism. Arestovych then recorded an address in Russian in which he supported the street musician, noting that the boy had the right to sing and should not have apologized. Arestovych ordered the State Bureau of Investigation to open criminal proceedings against People's Deputy Nataliya Pipa. The National Police has opened a case against Arestovych for knowingly falsely reporting a crime.

Arestovych stated 14 October 2023 in his Telegram channel that the current policy of the Ukrainian authorities is leading to a dead end and that "adequate solutions" should not be expected. He also went through the topic of counterattack.

"When I created high expectations for our counteroffensive, ... we made a number of mistakes, which, and this must be admitted (if we respect our own people and want to have a serious conversation with them - and how else?) - drove the situation into a strategic impasse. Two main mistakes were made on the battlefield:

"1) A lot of troops, equipment, and resources were spent for the sake of the myth of “Fortress Bakhmut.” ... A breakthrough in the south would give us strategic success in the war and the seizure of strategic initiative - political, moral, military. In essence, we would return the Russian army and Putin's regime to the state before February 23, which would mean the collapse of Putin's entire strategy - wasting so many lives and resources, losing the strategic position in the world, markets - and returning to where we started.....

"2) the lack of construction of large defense structures similar to our “Surovikin Line” on all sectors of the front where we are defending. Such structures would dramatically increase the combat stability of our troops, inflict even greater losses on the Russians, reduce the load on our forces and allow some of them to be redirected to offensive areas. This was not done, and this is our second strategic mistake.... The decision to redirect military efforts and build strategic-scale defense lines and areas could not be made by the military leadership (this is above its level of responsibility) but only political.....

"Now we are at an impasse. The Russians cannot defeat us, we cannot defeat them. For a decisive shift in the war, either side needs to be able to dramatically increase resources, but there is no such possibility. What's the solution? The Russian leadership is radically increasing its military budget, intensifying production, trying to secure supplies from North Korea/China, improving smuggling schemes and building a “Global South versus Global West” policy. His task is to hold out until the US presidential elections (November 2024), and then negotiate to his advantage.

"Our leadership suppresses business, civil liberties and political competitors, quarrels with neighbors and key partners, and encourages corruption.... Russia makes cannibalistic, but adequate to the current situation, decisions, and our leadership is corrupt and inadequate - as our sponsors and partners constantly point out. This policy leads us to a dead end.

"Our leadership, in my assessment, has exhausted the limits of its competence a long time ago. We can no longer expect adequate decisions from them that correspond to the situation. They don’t even want to tell the people the truth - there will be no borders in 1991, and there will be no Crimea in the near future, but there will be defense, blood, sweat, tears."

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, reacted 16 October 2023 to the statements of former OPU adviser Oleksiy Arestovych about the "failure of the counteroffensive" and the need for negotiations with Russia. According to Danilov's post on Facebook, "currently, according to all indications, the FSB of the Russian Federation is making active attempts to form a new agent network, placing far-reaching hopes on it." Danilov noted that various "experts", "actors-intelligencers" and "other kind of swindlers" have become active, promoting Russian narratives in Russian.

Arestovych sharply reacted to his words, saying that the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council is of almost no use to the state.

On 10 November 2023, he delivered a video lecture on Youtube “Realized Personality” or the art of being Arestovich, stating "In the process of life, a person is an integral part of someone's plan and inevitably carries it out. If we are not aware of it, it is someone else’s plan. If we realize, then there is a chance that this plan is ours. But in order to write down your plan and implement it, you need to know something technically and have the appropriate abilities.... Most of us are crumpled people, crushed by large superhuman forces - the pressure of society, the collective unconscious, the state. Crumpled people cannot defend themselves, they cannot implement their project.""

In 2015, he married Anastasia Valerievna Arestovych (Grybanova), who currently works as a development director at one of the publishing houses. The couple has two children together - daughter Veronika and son Oleksandr/Oleksii. Arestovich also has a daughter from his first marriage - Aelita. Oleksiy Arestovych is actively blogging. He has more than 500,000 followers on the Facebook social network, more than 1.700,000 on YouTube, snd nerrly 1,000,000 on Instagram. Arestovich also maintains his Telegram channel and Twitter. He was included in the top 100 bloggers of Ukraine according to a survey by the publication "Fakty".