{"id":252010,"date":"2024-01-08T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=252010"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:20:05","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T07:20:05","slug":"zelenskys-former-top-adviser-wants-kiev-to-ally-with-moscow-against-the-west-what-exactly-is-going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/01\/zelenskys-former-top-adviser-wants-kiev-to-ally-with-moscow-against-the-west-what-exactly-is-going-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelensky’s Former Top Adviser Wants Kiev to Ally with Moscow against the West \u2013 What Exactly Is Going On?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Aleksey Arestovich. \u00a9 Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

Aleksey Arestovich\u2019s latest idea is that the two warring countries should sue the US-led bloc together.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Jan 2024 <\/em>– Ukraine needs to come to an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then Kiev and Moscow should unite<\/a> to sue the West.<\/p>\n

\n

You may think the above idea is rather radical and unusual. Sue the West? Where? In what court? The same West that has no issue with either Ukraine or the US (or both) blowing up Germany\u2019s \u2013 and the EU\u2019s \u2013 vital energy pipelines? Or the West that ignores its leaders’ complicity in Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, a crime explicitly proscribed \u2013 the complicity no less than the act itself \u2013 in Article III (e)<\/a> of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention?<\/p>\n

But wait till you hear about the fertile mind that produced this very outside-the-box idea. It\u2019s none other than Aleksey Arestovich, once an adviser to Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky. Not necessarily a household name (yet) outside Ukraine, Arestovich was, until very recently,\u00a0a man of extraordinary influence in Kiev, and used it to energetically promote the very proxy war that he’d now like to end and to then blame on the West alone.<\/p>\n

University dropout, sleazy pop psychologist (of the how-to-manipulate-others-to-succeed type), former military and virtually certainly also intelligence officer, blogger and would-be-geopolitics guru with very adaptable views, and, of course, Zelensky aide from 2020 to 2023,\u00a0 Arestovich is not merely an individual but a syndrome: He stands for a social type, the smart but psychopathically empathy-less conman who managed to ruthlessly exploit the disorientation left behind in post-Soviet societies with a coldhearted cynicism that would have made Machiavelli blush.<\/p>\n

Now he deplores that Ukrainians and Russians are killing each other in droves over a couple of provincial towns. \u201cAnd for what?<\/em>\u201d, it has occurred to him to ask himself. Arestovich’s answer is of the kind that not long ago would’ve got you canceled in the West as a Putin stooge<\/em>\u00a0and appeaser:<\/em> \u201cWe have pleased the head honchos from the Washington and Brussels obkoms \u2013 [a now derogative term from the Soviet lexicon, designating a district administration] \u2013 who stand around us and applaud, watching as two apes with knives have a go at each other<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Arestovich\u2019s 180-degree turn is yet another absurdity produced by the theatrical politics of the Kiev elite. But, embittering as it may be to hear this former warmonger extraordinaire speak about peace and who’s blame, the stark contrast between the old anti-Russian jingoist Arestovich, and the new, would-be-friend of Russia and foe-of-the-West Arestovich, provides a depressingly accurate measure of just how irresponsible Ukrainian politics has become under the de facto authoritarian Zelensky regime.<\/p>\n

In 2019, it was Arestovich who infamously ‘predicted’<\/em>\u00a0a big and devastating war (beyond the conflict which started in 2014) with Russia over Ukraine\u2019s attempt to join NATO, which, eventually, in 2022, left some na\u00efve Western commenters<\/a> gushing over his \u201ceerie\u201d<\/em> foresight.<\/p>\n

Except Arestovich did not really predict<\/em>\u00a0the big war in 2019. Instead, he sold it as good as he could. Ruling out any possibility of peacefully ending the then-ongoing, smaller-scale conflict with the Donbass republics (Minsk II, anybody?), he used the usual baseless talking points (\u201cPutin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, destroy NATO, and the EU, dominate Europe\u201d<\/em> and so on, the whole hogwash then fashionable from Annalena Baerbock to Tim Snyder) to present an escalation into a bigger war as absolutely inevitable: Because not only did Minsk II hardly appear on this great fantasy-strategist\u2019s radar, he also insisted that neutrality was impossible for Ukraine and misled his followers into believing that NATO would easily (\u201call very simple now<\/em>\u201d) accept Ukraine, even if it had unresolved territorial conflicts with internal insurgents or\u00a0with Russia.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Arestovich presented the future big war as Ukraine\u2019s great chance<\/a>. Having posited the false alternative \u2013 at least back then \u2013 of either joining NATO after that big war against Russia (which he recklessly assumed Ukraine would win) or being absorbed by Moscow\u00a0in the near future, he wholeheartedly recommended course number one: war with Russia. Even three such wars in succession seemed to him both inevitable and advisable; back then, that is.<\/p>\n

And, finally, he also invited Ukrainians to indulge in the West\u2019s favorite fantasy, namely that Russia might suffer collapse and undergo a regime change. \u201cSome kind of liberals<\/em>\u201d would come to power, he claimed, and say \u201cwe are a nice country again.<\/em>\u201d That part of his sales pitch for a steadfast \u201cno\u201d<\/em> to diplomacy, compromise, and peace is particularly ironic now. For he has announced an utter and complete change of heart in an interview with Russian journalist and broadcaster Yulia Latynina.<\/p>\n

Latynina is, of course, the embodiment of the kind of \u201cliberal\u201d<\/em> (or \u201clibertarian,\u201d<\/em> as she prefers) almost no Russian can stand, for excellent reasons: Having received her 2008 \u201cfreedom award\u201d<\/em> from the US State Department, she has been a reliable purveyor of right-wing propaganda, ranging from denying global warming, via finding that poor countries need not have too much democracy, to an almost obsessive islamophobia.<\/p>\n

Even good old Europe is still too soft on simple people for her: All that \u201csocial-democratic<\/em>\u201d mumbo-jumbo about human rights, etc. won\u2019t cut it for Latynina; her true European ‘values’<\/em>\u00a0are about property, innovation, and competition. So much for those regime-change fantasies, then. It\u2019s the Latynina type that Arestovich was wagering on. No wonder most Russians, including those critical of President Vladimir Putin, say \u201canybody but that.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet in their recent t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate on YouTube, the Ukrainian conman and the Russian libertarian couldn’t see entirely eye to eye. Even Latynina felt that Arestovich\u2019s idea of joining up Russia to sue the NATO states\u00a0was a bit of a non-starter. Moreover, as much in awe of the West as she is, she had to remind him that it\u00a0\u201cdoesn’t owe Ukraine anything.<\/em>\u201d Arestovich, carried away by his newest brainwave, insisted it does.<\/p>\n

Both were missing the point: It does not matter what the West owes or does not owe you. The West will always only give you what is best for the West (and that usually means the US). And when that is \u201cnothing,\u201d<\/em> then that is what you will get. If only arrogant former warmongers like Arestovich could finally start facing reality. All of it.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Tarik Cyril Amar, <\/em>from Germany, works at Ko\u00e7 University, Istanbul. He is a historian on Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, WWII, the Cold War, and the politics of memory<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Go to Original – rt.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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