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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Yuliia Mendel, who worked as press secretary to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for just over two years and was recently sanctioned for spreading disinformation and propaganda, again made headlines this week. First, her scandalous interview with blogger Liliya Bahirova was released; second, Mendel was not allowed into the European Parliament. The publication "GORDON" collected the main points about this and shows the funniest memes about the former Zelensky press secretary's interview (and more).
From winning a competition among 4 thousand candidates to sanctions
When Zelensky became president (the inauguration took place on 20 May 2019), he did not yet have a press secretary. A competition he had announced a little earlier, 30 April, was underway. In early May, the president’s team reported that they had received approximately 3 thousand résumés (the final figure was a thousand higher) from candidates for the press secretary position, and later the media learned: Mendel won the competition; before that she had written articles for The New York Times, worked with a number of other international and Ukrainian media outlets, and had been a communications consultant at the World Bank (the publication "GORDON" previously wrote in detail about how Mendel became press secretary and who among Zelensky’s circle opposed her candidacy). The decree appointing Mendel was signed on 3 June 2019, two weeks after the president’s inauguration (we will return to these dates later in the article).
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Her career as press secretary was short but loud. Just a month later she allegedly jokingly called herself a "Kremlin agent," and in the fall of 2019 she was involved in a scandal when she shoved a journalist who tried to ask the president a question. As 14 September this year journalist Lena Chichenina wrote for the "Antonina" project, even then people had been telling the president that his press secretary was a "creepy person, behaving inappropriately, and should be chased away with dirty rags as soon as possible." But responding to the scandal with the journalist, Zelensky promised to "protect the girl" Mendel.
Finally, in early July 2021 Zelensky dismissed Mendel (at her own request) and appointed his press secretary Sergei Nykyforov, a former news anchor on the "Ukraine 24" channel, in her place. Nykyforov still occupies the position and (at least so far) has not been involved in scandals.
A few weeks after her dismissal, Mendel published the book "Each of Us Is a President," in which, critics noted, she wrote "a lot and pointedly complimentary" things about Zelensky and then-head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak (who is now under investigation), but spoke "extremely critically and at times disdainfully" about Zelensky’s first chief of staff Andriy Bohdan, former Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, and Ukraine’s fifth president Petro Poroshenko.
Several years after the full-scale war began, Mendel disappeared from the Ukrainian media space. But at the end of 2025 she appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where she said that Yermak, who had just been dismissed as head of the Office of the President, was "a very dangerous person," accused him of destroying people’s lives, but gave no examples and did not name names.
"I understand that no one will believe this now, but I pray every day, I thank God that I am alive. Because Andriy Borysovych is a very dangerous person, very dangerous," she asserted, claiming that Yermak had supposedly "convinced" Zelensky that there would be no war.
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Her rhetoric continued to change, and at the beginning of this year Mendel was accused of making anti-Ukrainian statements. In May she gave a one-and-a-half-hour interview to conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson. She said Ukraine was "on the verge of disappearing" and "declining," that the country was experiencing "unhealthy nationalism," and that Zelensky supposedly had mental problems and, in her words, was not very constructive.
In that interview Mendel switched to Russian to, sniffing, address the illegitimate president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. She said she was not his political opponent and "is not a threat to him at all." She described Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as: "Slavs killing Slavs." She also recounted how Russian occupiers organize hunts for people in Kherson region, where the journalist is from.
As Chichenina noted, Mendel "trashed Zelensky from head to toe within the first minutes" of the interview, and Presidential Communications Adviser Dmytro Lytvyn said that Mendel actually lacks insider information.
"This lady did not participate in negotiations, did not participate in decision-making, has long been out of sorts, and whether anyone told her anything there and whether it was true is not serious to comment on," he said.
In August she gave another propaganda interview in which she urged Ukrainians to accept territorial loss to end the war and cited Finland as an example. Now, as journalist Kateryna Soliar of the "24 channel" noted, she writes English-language posts claiming that Ukraine itself is to blame for Russia shelling Ukrainian cities and causing a humanitarian catastrophe. "By her logic, Moscow is depriving civilians of heat only because the Armed Forces strike targets deep inside Russia. That the Russians destroyed civilian infrastructure long before we had long-range capabilities, the ex-spokesperson, of course, does not mention," the journalist emphasized.
On 9 September, an announcement of Mendel’s appearance in the European Parliament appeared on the website of the far-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Relying "on personal experience," she was scheduled to speak on 16 September about the Russo-Ukrainian war and ways to end it alongside AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla, Swiss journalist Roger Köppel, and Member of the European Parliament Hansjörg Müller, who are known for their pro-Russian stances.
On 13 September Zelensky imposed sanctions against Mendel for spreading propaganda and disinformation, and the next day her interview with Bahirova was released.
"What a drama." What Mendel said and how the audience reacted
The blogger, who has slightly fewer than 59 thousand YouTube subscribers and 221 thousand Instagram followers, spoke with Mendel for more than an hour and a half. She clarified that the interview had been recorded before the sanctions were imposed.
The former presidential spokeswoman spoke about herself in the third person, complained that she was "under enormous pressure" because of her statements, said she "was very afraid for her life," and declared that the country is governed by "two people – Zelensky and Yermak."
Below is one of the quotes, said in the context of explaining the Carlson interview, that is being discussed on social networks and for which the chronology of her appointment was carefully collected at the start of the article.
"I have something that most politicians today don't have. I have a conscience. Every day I ask God to forgive me for helping this scum come to power, to be in power. So I simply cannot be silent, because it seems to me that if I stay silent, I will never forgive myself. The scum is Zelensky," Mendel said, who at the time of the election and Zelensky’s inauguration didn't even think about becoming a press secretary. So how she helped him come to power is a rhetorical question.
At this point, Chichenina jokes, Andriy Bohdan, Mykhailo Fedorov, and Dmytro Razumkov—who were indeed with Zelensky during the campaign—could take offense.
"But what passionate relations, what a drama! I hope someone quickly writes a script and submits it to the next 'Thousand-Year Festival.' Although such intensity can be well filmed by only one director, but we shamefully lost her," the journalist wrote.
"She helped him come to power, and now says she prays every day to God for forgiveness for this 'scum.' A brief history of Mendel's role in Zelensky's life. According to Mendel herself. Andriy Bohdan, how do you like that?" joked journalist Serhii Rudenko.
Journalist Mykhailo Tkach suggested that Mendel might not be opposed to repeating the career path of politicians who left for Russia, betraying Ukraine. "It seems Mendel wants to become the mayor of Sochi," he joked.
TV presenter Marichka Padalko amused users with a question about whether there were mentions of the old and long-debunked rumors discussed in the summer of 2021—about Mendel allegedly being pregnant by Zelensky. And Ester Vratarova, spokesperson for the organization Humaniti, whose volunteers evacuate people from occupied Oleshky, added: reality is so sarcastic that any comment in its context seems weaker.
Mendel, who was born in Henichesk, did not mention the humanitarian catastrophe in Oleshky during the interview, but said she is from Kherson. And Kherson, which the Russians constantly shell, supposedly pains her.
Speaking about Putin, she said his actions are "savagery." She claimed she does not justify the Kremlin leader, but at the same time said: "Putin started this war. But it is continued not only by Putin now; it is continued by us, and Europe, and so on. [...] We say: 'Putin, Putin, yes, Putin is a real bastard. But Putin is not to blame for Ukrainian corruption. Putin is not to blame for the houses being built near Kyiv. Putin is not to blame for the scandals that happen. Putin is not to blame for TCC.'"
Such rhetoric also angered social media users.
"The whole interview gives me a very strange feeling, as if she is driven by enormous rage at Zelensky; a little more and she would say that Zelensky is to blame for Nastia Kamenskikh's wrist," added user natashychhka.
The phrase that went viral was Mendel's: "Why I gave it to Carlson." The words are taken out of context—the discussion was about the interview with the American and Mendel's motivation—but nevertheless they amuse users. Political cartoonist and video satirist Bohdan Protsyshyn thoroughly commented on this phrase with a quote from Les Podervianskyi’s cult satirical play "Hamlet, or the Phenomenon of Danish Kacapism."
Journalist Tetiana Mykytenko expressed the opinion that now Mendel "will have to give interviews not to Tucker Carlson, but to the former rag Kyivstoner and other cheap outlets; Tucker at least was expensive and imported."
Mendel was not allowed into the European Parliament yesterday, and her appearance did not take place. European Parliament officials did not explain the reasons but emphasized that nothing unprecedented happened and that this is standard procedure. Mendel linked this to the sanctions imposed on her by the head of state. In her view, the sanctions were introduced because of the Carlson interview.
On her Facebook she stated that the "speech about peace" will happen anyway, because Mendel believes that "people and God" are behind her.
There are already more than 1,6 thousand comments there, including thoughts from well-known Ukrainians. Ambassador Oleksandr Scherba wrote that "Putin's lackeys have no place in Europe" and advised: "To the village, to the wilderness, to Saratov, Yulia!" Former police officer and human rights defender Zoia Melnyk asked about celebrity disease, and journalist Peter Zalmayev called to avoid dragging God into the story.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item ""Чому я дала Карлсону". Нове інтервʼю Мендель розібрали на меми". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
