‘Go f**k yourselves’, Zelensky aide tells Western officials

High-profile Ukrainian presidential adviser Alexey Arestovich has resorted to obscene language to criticize those in the West urging Kiev to cede part of the country’s territory to Russia for the sake of peace.

“Go f**k yourselves with such proposals, you dumb f**ks, to trade Ukrainian territory a little bit! Are you f**king crazy? Our children are dying, soldiers are stopping shells with their own bodies, and they are telling us how to sacrifice our territories. This will never happen,” he insisted in an interview on Wednesday.

Arestovich criticized the logic of “bleating” voices encouraging Ukraine “to curb its appetite” and to give Russia the territories it supposedly wants, as this would allow Kiev to “establish a comprehensive peace and to return to business as usual.”

Another adviser of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, took to Telegram on Wednesday to address the “pro-Russian lobbyists in Europe.”

“We do not sell our citizens, territories or sovereignty. This is a clear red line. Ukrainian society has paid a terrible price and will not allow anyone to even take a step in this direction – no government and no country,” Podoliak said.

“The Ukrainians defended Kiev, liberated three regions and are completing the liberation of the fourth. Today, the same people offer us to give Russia the east and the south. Thanks for the advice, but we’ll probably take up arms,” the adviser said.

The statements from Arestovich and Podoliak come after former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Monday. Kissinger urged Ukraine to make peace quickly, warning that if the conflict is not resolved within two months, Russia may become a “permanent ally” of China in its stand-off with the US.

President Volodymyr Zelensky also criticized Kissinger, calling him out by name, while speaking in more polite terms than Arestovich, saying the American statesman “emerged” from the long gone past and spoke “as if it is 1938 and not 2022. And he thought he was talking to an audience in Munich of that time and not Davos.”

He was apparently referring to the Munich Agreement, a deal that the UK and France made with Axis powers Germany and Italy in 1938, in which the Nazis were given a free hand to invade Czechoslovakia. Comparing modern Russia with Nazi Germany is a favorite rhetorical device of many Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine has insisted that it will not agree to any peace proposals that do not respect its pre-2014 borders.

Moscow has made it clear that the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the status of Crimea as a Russian region, are not up for discussion.

Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.