“The Office of the President of Ukraine is a place where people speak Russian”, – Arestovych said

All internal meetings at the Office of the President are conducted in Russian.

This was revealed in an interview with blogger Mykola Feldman by Oleksiy Arestovych, who served as an advisor to the Office of the President until January 2023.

Arestovych was commenting on Volodymyr Zelensky’s remarks on Lex Fridman’s podcast, where Zelensky stated that he does not respect the Russian people and does not want to speak the Russian language because it is “the language of weapons.”

“All negotiations were conducted in Russian, all behind-the-scenes conversations were in Russian. The Office of the President is a place where people speak Russian. Everyone without exception, including Zelensky. Always. There are no internal exceptions; that’s only for official appearances. This is a person who says, ‘I don’t respect my native language, the language of my mother, the language in which I built my career, grew up, and so on.’ I never heard a single meeting during my time at the Office conducted in any language other than Russian. I spent 2.5 years there,” Arestovych said.

He added that, to his knowledge, the situation remains exactly the same today.