Arestovych called the NSDC sanctions against journalists and businessmen a crackdown on dissenters

Sanctions imposed by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) have become a tool for cracking down on political opponents and are now being used for extortion.

This information reported according to former presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych.

Speaking on the program hosted by TV presenter Oleksandr Shelest — who himself was sanctioned by the NSDC last week — Arestovych sharply criticized the current system.

He referred to the way sanctions are used in Ukraine as “village-style Putinism.”

“At the beginning of the war, then-NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov submitted lists with thousands of names, which even raised questions among our Western partners. To avoid getting on the list — or to be removed from it — certain messengers would ask for large sums of money. The sanction mechanism turned into ordinary racketeering. A government institution was turned into something like the ‘Myrotvorets’ website, where people are added just for being disliked by followers of the ‘UPA dugout’ ideology — or simply if someone wants to extract resources from them. This is not state policy, it’s a primitive form of authoritarianism in the worst sense,” Arestovych said.