Iuliia Mendel

Iuliia Mendel is a Ukrainian journalist and commentator, born in Henichesk in the Kherson region in 1986, who served as press secretary to President Volodymyr Zelensky from June 2019 to July 2021. Before that she reported for Ukrainian channels including ICTV, Espreso TV, 112 Ukraine and Inter, contributed to Politico Europe, the Atlantic Council, Vice, Spiegel Online and Forbes, and wrote for The New York Times in 2018 and 2019, including a co-bylined May 2019 story on Joe Biden, Viktor Shokin and Burisma. Her memoir of the Zelensky years, "The Fight of Our Lives" (Simon & Schuster, 2022), praised his leadership; since November 2024 she has argued for a ceasefire and negotiations in the Kyiv Post, Time and on France 24, gave a roughly 100-minute interview to Tucker Carlson in May 2026, and now writes the Substack "Exclusives and analysis from Ukraine". On 13 September 2026 Zelensky signed a decree sanctioning her for ten years on grounds of spreading disinformation and supporting Russia's aggressive policy (asset freeze, revocation of state awards, her X, Facebook and Instagram pages blocked inside Ukraine), and three days later she was denied entry to the European Parliament and delivered her speech to an ESN-group event in Strasbourg remotely.