“There was already a date set for a meeting with Putin”: Arestovich said that Zelensky refused to sign the Istanbul agreements

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky refused to sign the Istanbul agreements, although the date of his meeting with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin had already been set.

This was told by former adviser of the Presidential Office Oleksii Arestovych, who participated in the negotiations, in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak.

According to him, after Boris Johnson’s visit to Kyiv, who proposed to “just fight,” Zelensky convened a meeting.

Arestovych said that against the withdrawal from negotiations with Russia objected he himself, as well as the head of the “Servant of the People” faction David Arakhamia and former diplomat Oleksandr Chalyi (he also participated in negotiations with the Russian Federation).

“The meeting was going on in the negotiating group, that is 12 people. Zelensky was constantly present, Yermak was constantly present. I politely, with observance of hierarchy, but objected against certain positions. Arakhamia objected a lot, often. And more freely, because they are in more free relations (with Zelensky – Ed.). He objected most brightly of all, he was the main critic. He all the time occupied a moderately strategic, moderately skeptical position. Roughly the logic was like this: are we really doing the right thing, do we need this, maybe we should try other options?” Arestovych said.

At the same time, he noted that the meeting between Putin and Zelensky in Istanbul was scheduled for April 9, since the Istanbul communiqué had already been signed.

In Arestovych’s opinion, three factors worked on the decision to exit the negotiations.

“The first is the shock from Bucha and the desire to take revenge. The second is the real successes of the Ukrainian armed forces in the defense of Kyiv and the north. If we failed the south — Mariupol, Melitopol, there up to Zaporizhzhia everything was taken — then Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv were defended very successfully. They actually disrupted the plan of the Russian troops’ offensive, inflicted significant losses, and believed that a military defeat of the Russian grouping was possible. And here, apparently, those comrades Biden and Johnson promised the amount of military-technical and diplomatic aid that allows to defeat, at least, part of the Russian grouping and occupy a more advantageous negotiating position,” said the former adviser of the Presidential Office of Ukraine.

He also considers that “Zelensky did not want to be drawn into a long war.”

“He was, conditionally, being drawn into the war until September twenty-second. That is, to do what? To receive aid, to defeat (the Russian Federation – Ed.) and to get more,” Arestovych said.

During the same interview, Arestovych stated that in the case of being elected President of Ukraine, he would hand over to the Russian Federation four regions and Crimea for the sake of ending the war, without at the same time legally recognizing them as Russian, and also would ensure the rights of Russian-speakers and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.