{"id":1392320,"date":"2026-05-12T11:54:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/zelenskys-ex-spokeswoman-gave-a-candid-interview-key-theses-and-bankovas-reaction\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T11:54:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:54:40","slug":"zelenskys-ex-spokeswoman-gave-a-candid-interview-key-theses-and-bankovas-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/zelenskys-ex-spokeswoman-gave-a-candid-interview-key-theses-and-bankovas-reaction\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelensky&#8217;s ex-spokeswoman gave a candid interview: key theses and Bankova&#8217;s reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Former spokeswoman for Volodymyr Zelensky, Yulia Mendel (2019-2021), gave an interview to American blogger Tucker Carlson. She called the Ukrainian president a &#8220;hidden evil&#8221; and voiced other messages beneficial to Russian propaganda.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> The interview <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Pkz2-cWHPbg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">is published<\/a> on Tucker Carlson&#8217;s YouTube channel.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;I want to say right away: I&#8217;m not here to justify the Russian invasion. I&#8217;m not justifying Putin. What the Russian army is doing in Ukraine is crimes against humanity. But this war is no longer black and white. It&#8217;s dark. And even darker. We see Putin as evil. But Zelensky is also evil &#8211; just hidden. On camera, he plays a teddy bear. But when the lights go out, he turns into a grizzly bear and destroys people,&#8221; Mendel said.<\/p>\n<p> According to her, during her work, Zelensky repeated the phrases &#8220;Ukraine is not ready for democracy&#8221;, &#8220;Dictatorship is order&#8221;. &#8220;I was present at his meeting with Putin in 2019 in Paris. There were very few people around him who knew the truth. He (Zelensky, &#8211; ed.) had a private conversation with Putin, where he promised that Ukraine would never join NATO. It was December 2019. There was a personal conversation that very few people know about. He said: &#8220;There will be no NATO&#8221;, because Ukraine has never been close to NATO,&#8221; says Zelensky&#8217;s former press secretary.<\/p>\n\t\t<aside class=\"shortcode-also\" data-title=\"Read also\" >\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/it-stinks-of-laptya-will-mendels-scandalous-interview-affect-aid-to-ukraine\/\">&#8220;It Stinks of Laptya&#8221;: Will Mendel&#8217;s Scandalous Interview Affect Aid to Ukraine?<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\n<p> At the same time, Mendel reported that during the negotiations in Istanbul in 2022, the Ukrainian president allegedly personally agreed to give Donbas to the Russian Federation, and she was told about this by Ukrainian representatives at these negotiations. &#8220;Shocking news. I asked: &#8220;Really, he agreed?&#8221; And they answered me: &#8220;Of course. He was ready because it would stop the horror of the war. He agreed to give the territory because it would mean the end of the war.&#8221; And now he stands in front of millions of people and says: &#8220;I cannot give Donbas.&#8221; He is inconsistent. He constantly changes positions,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<p> In addition, Mendel called it an &#8220;open secret&#8221; that Zelensky allegedly uses drugs. &#8220;I personally have never seen him use it. But for the book I met many people who confirmed that they saw him doing it in various clubs. Only one saw it personally. In 2021, I found out who his supplier from &#8220;Quarter 95&#8243; was (&#8230;). All these people talk about cocaine,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p> At the end, Yulia Mendel addressed dictator Putin in Russian, saying that &#8220;peace is the only possible solution today.&#8221; &#8220;Vladimir Volodymyrovych, I do not have your life experience. I do not understand how you see this world. But I am not a representative of NATO, I am not a representative of the West, I do not work for Zelensky. I am not your political opponent. I am not a threat to you at all. I am a Ukrainian woman from the Ukrainian provincial city of Kherson,&#8221; summed up the former spokeswoman for the President of Ukraine, Yulia Mendel.<\/p>\n\t\t<aside class=\"shortcode-also\" data-title=\"Read also\" data-right>\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/denazification-with-our-own-hands-how-the-authorities-in-ukraine-contribute-to-ethnocide\/\">Self-Inflicted \u201cDenazification\u201d: How Ukraine\u2019s Elite Enables Ethnocide<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\n<p> <strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;\">Reaction of the President&#8217;s Office<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p> The OP <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pravda.com.ua\/news\/2026\/05\/12\/8034259\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">categorically<\/a> rejected the words of her former subordinate. They emphasized that Mendel had no access to state decision-making and was not involved in the negotiation process. The OP also directly questioned the adequacy of her statements.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;This lady did not participate in the negotiations, did not participate in the decision-making, she has been out of her mind for a long time, and who is telling her something and whether it was real &#8211; it is not serious to comment,&#8221; the OP told journalists.<\/p>\n<p> It is significant that Mendel chose Tucker Carlson, known for his systematic anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, justification of Russian aggression, and sharp criticism of military aid to Ukraine, as a platform for these accusations. Carlson has repeatedly visited Russia, where he conducted extensive complimentary interviews with Vladimir Putin and the ideologist of the &#8220;Russian world&#8221; Alexander Dugin.<\/p>\n<p> It should be noted that this is not the first dubious statement by Zelensky&#8217;s former spokeswoman. Previously, Mendel stated that the former head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, is engaged in magic &#8211; and not just ordinary magic, but trips to the cemetery and &#8220;dead water&#8221;. She also called Yermak a &#8220;very dangerous person&#8221; and stated that she fears for her life. At the same time, she limited herself to general phrases, referring to &#8220;her experience&#8221; and &#8220;connections&#8221;, but did not provide any details that would confirm her words.<\/p>\n<p> Also follow <strong>\u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pryamiy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Facebook<\/a> , <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/prm_ua\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">X<\/a> , <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/+rtV4dxYu2_cyNjVi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Telegram<\/a> , and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/pryamiy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former spokeswoman for Volodymyr Zelensky, Yulia Mendel (2019-2021), gave an interview to American blogger Tucker Carlson. She called the Ukrainian president a &#8220;hidden evil&#8221; and voiced other messages beneficial to Russian propaganda. The interview is published on Tucker Carlson&#8217;s YouTube channel. &#8220;I want to say right away: I&#8217;m not here to justify the Russian invasion. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":1392295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76872,76885,76871],"class_list":["post-1392320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-feed","category-policy","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1392320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1392295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1392320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1392320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}