Ukraine's Border Guards deny that president's former adviser crossed border in September 2023 with letter from Defence Intelligence

VALENTYNA ROMANENKO — Thursday, 1 February 2024, 18:10

Andrii Demchenko. Photo: Media Center Ukraine

The State Border Service denies that Oleksii Arestovych, the former freelance adviser to the head of the President's Office and the notorious blogger, crossed the Ukrainian border and left the country on 4 September 2023, citing a letter from the Ministry of Defence's Main Directorate of Intelligence.

Source: Andrii Demchenko, speaker for Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service (SBGS), in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda

Quote: "Border control measures are implemented during the passage of citizens across the border by inspectors from Ukraine's State Border Service in accordance with border crossing legislation and norms. I'd like to point out that the border department does not share information about citizens crossing the border.

However, given that false information is now spreading and the publication that disseminated it refers to sources in the border service, I can note that the information about Oleksii Arestovych, who allegedly left Ukraine thanks to a letter from the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence, is false."

Details: To Ukrainska Pravda's clarifying question about whether Arestovych had ever received a letter from Ukraine's Defence Intelligence, Demchenko simply repeated that "the State Border Guard Service does not disclose information about crossing the border" and, in this case, "reacted to false information that was spread under the guise of sources in the State Border Guard Service."

When asked to comment on the data of the border crossing database published by NGL.media on the evening of 1 February, the State Border Guard Service spokesman said that he had already answered the question earlier and once again noted that the information about the citizen Oleksii Arestovych, who allegedly left Ukraine on 4 September 2023 thanks to a letter from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, was not true, "even despite the dissemination of incomprehensible pictures that pass off as information from the SBGS."

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