Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Resigns Over False Dnipro Strike Claims – Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced his resignation this week after making inaccurate claims about the Dnipro strikes that killed 45 people over the weekend.
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Arestovych had claimed that the Russian missile that hit an apartment building in the city had been shot down by Ukraine.
The Russian anti-ship missile caused monumental damage to the building, effectively tearing it in half. Emergency workers called off the search for survivors on Tuesday, but 20 people are still missing.
Hours after the attack occurred, Arestovych told YouTube channel Feigin Live that the rocket had been shot down by Ukraine and exploded when it fell to the ground.
“The rocket was shot down, it fell on the driveway, it exploded when it fell,” the former Ukrainian official said.
Ukrainian military officials, however, said otherwise.
By using an anti-ship missile against a land-based target – in this instance, a residential building – Russia effectively ensured that Ukraine was unable to stop the rocket.
Ukrainian air defense forces responded in a statement by insisting that Ukraine does not have the technological capability to track down an anti-ship missile and shoot it down.
Ukraine Drama: Why Arestovych Resigned
Arestovych’s claim seemed to imply that Ukraine was responsible for the horrific damage caused by the strike.
Following the claim, a large number of Ukrainian public figures and members of civil society took to social media to demand his resignation for making the statement.
Some even accused Arestovych of parroting Russian propaganda, which has previously suggested that Ukraine is responsible for Russian missile strikes on civilian infrastructure. The Dnipro strike was one of the most dramatic of the war so far, killing families and children in a building that housed 1,700 people.
Arestovych did admit that he got it wrong – though only after two days of pressure. In a Telegram post, the former Ukrainian official said that he made a “serious mistake” when he made the comments.
Arestovych also apologized to the families of victims, and to “everyone who was deeply hurt by my prematurely erroneous version of the reason for the Russian missile hitting a residential building.”
The former Ukrainian official blamed tiredness for his mistake and insisted that what he said was simply a theory put to him by a colleague who was close to the scene of the attack when it happened.
Arestovych, a former actor, was appointed to the position on a freelance basis in 2020.
He was not technically considered a member of staff.
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Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
