"Everything was going to reconciliation, I had a calendar." Arestovych explains his meme phrase about "two or three weeks"

As much as we would like to forget the legendary meme about "two or three weeks" from Oleksiy Arestovych, a former advisor to the Presidential Office, it seems that the issue is still alive. He was accused of lying because the "two or three" weeks before the end of the Russian-Ukrainian war have been going on for almost two years. Arestovych said that he knew what he was talking about and hoped that the negotiations would be successful, ending the armed aggression.

In an interview with journalist Anna Olytska, Aleksey Arestovych said that he was not lying when he announced the timing of the war, because he "was a member of the Istanbul negotiating group" that was supposed to decide the fate of the war. Given that the Russians are still shelling Ukrainian cities, Arestovych's work in the negotiations was as effective as his work in the Presidential Office.

"One of the biggest complaints against me is that I allegedly lied on purpose to calm people down. The famous two or three weeks were born from the fact that I was a member of the Istanbul negotiating group. I knew that in two or three weeks there would be a meeting in Istanbul to end the war, and then a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin. It was decided, the calendar existed. I knew what I was saying," Arestovych explained.

In his opinion, in March 2022, amid hostilities, when the talks in Istanbul were supposed to take place, the military-political situation was heading toward reconciliation.

"As a military man, I understood this perfectly well, and then I made a mistake, if you remember, and said that this war would last until 2035. I mean not only the Russian-Ukrainian war but a series of all wars in the world, where Ukraine will be affected by these wars in one way or another. I told the truth. God, what a panic there was. I asked then: do you want "two or three weeks" or the truth? Although "two or three" weeks was also true because I knew exactly the calendar of the Istanbul meeting. Everything was going to reconciliation," he said.

Interestingly, earlier Arestovych had a completely different explanation for the "two or three" weeks. He claimed that this term explained when "the active phase of the operation near Kyiv will end," not the entire armed aggression. In his defense, he said that he later used the phrase "2-3 weeks" as a meme.

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