Summary of the semi-daily livestream with Oleksiy Arestovych, Ukraine’s Presidential Head of Office advisor, Day 327, January 16th. Kindly brought to you by Atis: @savaadaak
English voice-over video by Privateer Station:
Original video in Russian:
⚡️ Reactions to Saturday’s broadcast (Dnipro missile strike):
There have been attacks on this live stream since the first day, now a different narrative became somewhat successful – that Arestovych is a Russian agent.
[translator’s comment – On Saturday’s stream Arestovych mentioned that Kh-22 missile was or could have been hit by air defense before it hit an apartment building]
Today, nobody believes that the Kh-22 missile was hit by air-defense. There is consensus, that 🇷🇺 Russia is at fault for firing a missile that hit a civilian building.
Arestovych: I made a serious mistake. I want to apologize to the:
– relatives and close persons of victims
– inhabitants of Dnipro, experiencing tragedy, who did hear one explosion, and know that there was only one missile
– all Ukrainians and everyone, who were especially hurt by my words personally.
⚡️ Russia’s informational war:
No apologies to those who are participating in political manipulations. 🇺🇦 Ukraine’s opposition engaged in a combined operation with 🇷🇺 Russia, against citizens of 🇺🇦 Ukraine in order to spread hate and divide the society.
The operation started with spreading news about imminent danger from the North, to move forces away from Soledar, and ended with hate against Arestovych and Feygin, to disable them before the start of a big campaign.
Now it culminates with Medvedchuk’s article proposing the existence of two Ukraines, like Korea is split. [ https://news.yahoo.com/medvedchuk-writes-article-ukraine-threatening-091017977.html ]
Some officials are requesting SBU to check Arestovych’s possible spying for 🇷🇺 Russia and to fire him.
Arestovych is not attacking people attacking him, as he understands everyone is in the same boat. Everyone needs to unite and work for victory. It’s not the right time for politics, leave politics after the war. Instead of presenting information about Dnipro missile attack, social media was overwhelmed with discussing Arestovych.
There would be more gain if everyone who complained about Arestovych would ask for more air defense that can intercept Kh-22.
Conclusion – Arestovych needs to check information more carefully, stress and tiredness shouldn’t be an excuse.
⚡️ Feygin’s comments:
Feygin noticed the usual methods as seen before, spreading fake posts repeatedly by many 🇷🇺 Russian telegram channels. If it didn’t stay in 🇺🇦 Ukrainian social media, it would have stopped by the morning. As it did remain, comments by Peskov, Zakharova, Solovyov followed, portraying Arestovych as working for 🇷🇺 Russia.
This broadcast is not intended to reveal secret or insider information, it is to discuss recent news and publicly available information.
Due to it being a livestream, there are mistakes and inaccuracies, most information needs to be verified. Stream is intended to have a presence effect, this is what helped psychologically to many viewers at beginning of the war. Besides informational and analytical levels, it is supposed to have a calming effect, to help viewers.
Sooner or later broadcasts will end, the same way as war will end. Past success is the reason to continue, while it can be useful and important to the audience. Stopping broadcasts now would be fulfilling Kremlin’s wish. If anyone thinks, they can make a better broadcast, they are welcome to do so, Youtube is open to everyone.
⚡️ Battlefield update:
Kherson got shelled – apartment building and boarding school got hit, at least 1 killed.
Zaporizhzhia also shelled, 5 wounded including 2 children
Bakhmut-Soledar – main enemy offensive, considering how to use new territorial gains to attack Bakhmut.
Avdiivka-Opytne-Pisky – unchanged enemy efforts, the former area of Donetsk airport defense.
Kreminna-Spirne – enemy attempts to advance in direction of Lyman
Marinka – enemy efforts
Tokmak – small accumulation of enemy forces, unknown objectives
Kherson – artillery duels
⚡️ Donetsk airport:
January 16th is Day of Remembrance of the Cyborgs (defenders of Donetsk airport), which fell in January 2015, after almost a year of heavy battles.
⚡️ Belarus:
Today started joint exercises of 🇧🇾 Belarus and 🇷🇺 Russian forces, expecting air raid warnings will be more often, as training includes significant aviation activity.
⚡️ Iran:
🇮🇷 Iran announced the purchase of Gen4 fighter jets Su-35 from 🇷🇺 Russia, expected delivery by end of March. Deal details are unknown, but intelligence reports those aircraft had been intended for 🇪🇬 Egypt in 2019, now being exchanged for Shahed drones. There is the question, why 🇮🇷 Iran is publishing the deal, but previously 🇮🇷 Iran was unhappy about 🇷🇺 Russia not being able to keep the secret of drone origins.
The meeting of 🇷🇺 Lavrov and 🇮🇷 Iranian officials, planned on January 17th was rescheduled for later.
⚡️ Weapons and financial aid:
🇬🇧 U.K. announced 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks, 8 AS-80 self-propelled howitzers, dozens of drones, 100k artillery shells, 100 sophisticated missiles.
🇩🇪 Scholz accepted quitting by MoD Lambrecht. Ramstein meeting on January 20th could have significant influence and things to discuss.
🇪🇺 E.U. signed € 18 billion memorandum of financial assistance to 🇺🇦 Ukraine.
⚡️ Russian objective:
Gerasimov has been given the order to capture the Donetsk district until March. Apparently, various elites have been forced to act calm, and pretend to not have conflicts. This is part of the informational preparations of operation.
