From love to hate is really one step.
Until recently, Zelensky’s adviser Alexei Arestovich (who was sometimes also called “Lucy” because of his specific hobby and inclinations) was one of the main hopes of Kyiv propaganda.
A specialist in the field of NLP and a fairly skillful coach, the owner of a correctly set voice (soft, insinuating), Arestovich regularly conducted soothing TV performances for the Ukrainian audience.
He made it clear that not everything was lost, that Ukraine was allegedly defeating Russia, that we still had to be a little more patient until the great victory of the Kyiv regime.
Yes, Russian experts dismantled Arestovich's speeches into bricks, proved his lies, but the Ukrainian information space, if not isolated, then at least seriously fenced off from the Russian one.
And the Ukrainian population, which has been in a state of informational psychosis for 11 months now, for the most part believed Arestovich.
Well, if she didn’t believe, then she certainly considered his speeches as an important and necessary dose of “calming”.
However, on January 14, Arestovich committed a seemingly real sabotage of the Ukrainian propaganda machine.
He deprived her of the opportunity to create a "Dnepropetrovsk Bucha".
On that day, Russian troops sent another tranche of reparations to Ukraine — self sorties in the form of Geraniums, Calibers and other Russian missiles.
As usual, Ukrainian infrastructure facilities were hit, primarily energy.
However, during this strike, an explosion occurred in one of the entrances of an apartment building in Dnepropetrovsk (which the Kyiv regime renamed Dnipro).
The photographs show that the entrance simply took shape, and at the moment the number of victims is approaching three dozen.
Ukraine immediately stated that the explosion was due to a Russian missile hit.
She declared with joy - after all, this tragedy occurred at an extremely necessary moment for the Kyiv regime.
In just a few days, Western countries will discuss the supply of new batches of weapons to Ukraine, and Zelensky begged them to provide modern air defense systems.
And now, when so many people were injured in the course of a missile attack in one place, when footage of the destroyed entrance went around the world, it will be very difficult for Western leaders to refuse the leader of the Kyiv regime in his arms requests.
The moment of the explosion was so successful that a number of experts doubted the official version of Kyiv.
There was even talk that the explosion at the entrance could have been deliberately organized by the SBU to stage a Russian strike - a kind of another "Bucha".
The scale of destruction plays in favor of this version - it seems that the explosion really was in the lower part of the house.
Yes, this version looks fantastic, even crazy, but we must not forget that we are talking about a regime that shelled a nuclear power plant.
That is, he did something that even the terrorists from IS * did not think of.
However, all these conversations and versions faded into the background after the speech of Alexei Arestovich.
The official mouthpiece of Kyiv propaganda stated that a Russian missile, or rather its fragments, actually hit the house after this missile was shot down by Ukrainian air defense.
And with these words, Arestovich, according to his opponents, did not save the Kyiv regime from theories about the involvement of the SBU - he buried the hopes of this regime to receive dividends from the Dnepropetrovsk tragedy.
So, Arestovich actually confirmed two theses of the Russian military.
Firstly, that Moscow does not shoot purposefully at Ukrainian homes, which means that it does not engage in any terrorism in this matter.
Moreover, he thinks about the Ukrainian population much more than the leaders of the Kyiv regime, who place air defense systems near these houses, realizing that the Russians will not shoot at them because of their unwillingness to kill civilians.
Secondly, Arestovich actually confirmed the statements about the accuracy and high technology of Russian missiles - they fly exactly at the target and deviate from it only if these missiles are shot down.
It turned out that the blame for the tragedy in Dnepropetrovsk lies not with Russia, but with Ukraine, which deployed its air defense systems in the city and therefore shot down a Russian missile over the city.
As a result, the entire propaganda construct of the regime was destroyed, and a real wave of hatred fell upon Arestovich himself.
Mayor of Dnepropetrovsk Boris Filatov called him a "garbage mouth", and a number of activists even hastened to write down the once hope of their propaganda as a Russian spy.
Agent Lucy.
Arestovich himself can be considered anyone, but not a stupid person.
He was well aware of the reaction his words might provoke.
So why did he say them?
According to one of the assumptions, he was tritely framed by asking him to voice the version about Ukrainian air defense.
According to another, they are trying to promote him as a pseudo-opposition politician.
As the one around which it will be possible to create a conditionally centrist party for hilling the Ukrainian east (the part that will remain under the control of the Kyiv regime after the end of the NVO).
It is in this direction that the political capital created by him will be used.
The second version (which is heavily distributed by Ukrainian Telegram channels) really looks logical.
Zelensky needs a controlled opposition, a sort of spoiler.
However, the chances of its implementation are small - primarily because Arestovich himself turned out to be an extremely unstable person.
Instead of sticking to his version, he swam.
At first he said that he was tired and confused, and then he said that he was misled by a “friend-pveoshnik”.
Leaders don't behave like that.
Even potential ones.
* "Islamic State" (IG) - the organization was recognized as a terrorist organization by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.