That’s why Kiev’s foreign backers won’t give Ukraine tanks and warplanes, Alexey Arestovich says
Western countries aren’t arming Ukraine with tanks and planes because they’re now looking for a negotiated end to the conflict between Kiev and Moscow, Alexey Arestovich, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has said.
“It’s clear what we’re talking about. They don’t want a complete defeat of Russia. They want to force Russia to negotiate in order to achieve peace,” Arestovich said in an interview interview with activist Mark Feygin on the latter’s YouTube show on Friday.
However, the adviser warned that the plans of the EU leaders to stop the conflict through talks are bound to fail.
“It’s going to be about Ukraine liberating all its territories by military means, or at least, bringing things to as they were before February 24” when Moscow launched its military operation, he insisted.
So far, the Russian forces, who have an overwhelming advantage in artillery and other arms, are steadily gaining ground in Donbass.
But, according to Arestovich, “one day, a turning point will come – the Russian troops will begin to withdraw from Ukraine on their own just like they retreated from the Kiev, Sumy, and the Chernigov Region.”
This will happen “for one simple reason” because the Russian military will “realize the futility” of its efforts, he stated.
Moscow did withdraw its troops from areas mentioned by Arestovich in early April. According to Russia, this was done as a gesture of goodwill following a promising launch of peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul. However, Kiev soon backtracked on the agreements floated in Turkey, and the sides have not approached the negotiating table since then.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited Kiev on Thursday together with the German and Italian leaders, explained that Western nations have decided to refrain from supplying tanks and planes to Ukraine. “This is an unofficial agreement, but it is also almost the official position of NATO countries,” he said.
“We help Ukraine to defend itself, but we are not participating in the war against Russia,” Macron explained.
Back in April, Poland said it supplied Ukraine with about 240 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks.
There were also unconfirmed reports that Czechia, Slovakia, and Slovenia had sent tanks to Kiev – whether some version of the T-72 or the very similar Yugoslav M-84. Major EU nations, however, have so far refrained from supplying Kiev’s forces with this kind of weapon.
Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’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.
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The Japanese carrier Zipair will replace its tail symbol due to customer complaints
A low-cost Japanese airline is changing the logo on its tail fins, replacing the letter “Z” with a geometric pattern, its president announced on Friday. Shingo Nishida said Zipair was taking this step after receiving a number of customer complaints about the letter, which has been seen on some Russian military vehicles during the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The “Z” was adopted as the company’s logo in 2018, when Zipair was first established as a subsidiary of Japan Airlines. The company said it was planning to roll out the replacement design anyway, but will speed up the process so as to avoid the impression it was supporting Russia.
“We can confirm that we have received a number of customer comments regarding their feelings toward the design of the current livery,” a Zipair spokesman told CNN. “As a public transportation company, we are aware that the letter in question has been shown over various media channels on a global scale and how the design may be conceived in a negative way.”
“I think some people might feel that way when they see it without any explanation,” Nishida said at a press conference on Friday, announcing the revamp alongside a new US route. Zipair plans to start flying to San Jose, California in December.
Zipair will put decals on all of its four Boeing-787 Dreamliners starting on Saturday, and gradually repaint the planes by the spring of 2023, Nishida said.
The company was set up in 2018 but named Zipair – to represent speed – in March 2019. It began cargo operations in June 2020 and passenger flights in October that year, after pandemic-induced delays. Zipair currently connects Tokyo to Singapore, Bangkok, Seoul and two US destinations – Los Angeles, California and Honolulu, Hawaii.
In March, Ukraine called on countries the world over to stop using the letters Z and V, saying the Roman-alphabet symbols stood for “aggression” after some Russian military vehicles sported them as identification marks during the conflict.
Since then, Switzerland’s Zurich Insurance dropped their “Z” branding, South Korean tech giant Samsung has removed the letter from its smartphone models in the Baltic states, while Elle magazine denounced its Russian branch for publishing a cover about “Generation Z” – an entirely unrelated demographic reference.
