Iuliia Mendel

Iuliia Volodymyrivna Mendel (; born 3 September 1986) is a Ukrainian journalist. She was the press secretary in the administration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy from June 2019 until July 2021, leaving the post several months before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. During her tenure, she was accused of assaulting several journalists. After leaving her role as press secretary, she released two memoirs: Each of Us Is President (July 2021), and The Fight of Our Lives - My Time With Zelenskyy, Ukraine's Battle for Democracy, and What it Means to the World (September 2022). In both books, she praised Zelenskyy and spoke positively of her time as press secretary. By 2025, Mendel was calling for an immediate ceasefire in the war, saying that Ukraine was "losing its nation" by continuing to resist Russia. In a 2026 interview with Tucker Carlson, she launched a scathing attack on Zelenskyy's character and made various accusations against him and his government. The interview was widely condemned in Ukraine, with journalists and politicians saying she offered no evidence and accusing her of spreading Russian disinformation.

Biography She graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and is a candidate of philological sciences. In June 2008, she graduated from the Institute of Philology of KNU, where she studied English and Polish, Ukrainian language and literature. In 2012, she defended her PhD thesis on The natural philosophical metalogy of Volodymyr Zatulyviter's lyrics in the context of poetry of 1970–90.

She worked as a journalist for ICTV, Espreso TV, 112 Ukraine and Inter TV channels. Iuliia Mendel became the first Ukrainian journalist to win the World Press Institute program.

She had previously worked as a Communications Consultant at the World Bank, and had contributed journalistic reporting for The New York Times. Mendel had worked as a journalist for several other media outlets that includes work for Politico Europe, the Atlantic Council, Vice, Spiegel Online, and Forbes.

She trained abroad as part of the Lech Wałęsa Solidarity program, the THREAD program at Yale University, and took a course at the Warsaw Euro-Atlantic Summer Academy (WEASA).

Press secretary for the President of Ukraine

Mendel won a competition for press secretary for the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on 30 April 2019. Winning against 4,000 other contestants, Mendel was appointed on 3 June 2019. Der Spiegel, Gazeta Wyborcza, and he also appears on the covers of Time, and The Guardian. In August 2020, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's interview with Euronews was published in 13 languages: English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Greek, Albanian, Turkish, Arabic and Persian.

Iuliia Mendel also issued official statements from the president's office; for example about PrivatBank and Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, where the Ukrainian President said that in the history of the bank "he will protect the interests of the state of Ukraine, the interests of every Ukrainian only", and that "Kolomoyskyi doesn’t have the authority to act on behalf of Ukraine or the Office of the President of Ukraine".

During her tenure, Mendel accompanied president Zelenskyy on all regional and international visits. She oversaw the information content of the official website of the President of Ukraine, president.gov.ua, social networks, and work with the media.

In December 2019, she participated in the Normandy Format talks in Paris.

In July 2020, The National Interest published an article by Iuliia Mendel entitled "Why Ukraine Really Is On the Road to Reform", where she talks about new government initiatives, Zelenskyy's presidency, land reform in Ukraine, and IMF tranches.

On March 15, 2021, she made her debut as the host of the View from the Bankova program on the Dom TV channel, the launch of which became known only on the day of the first broadcast. Later it turned out that Mendel was not the host of the program, but one of the speakers from the Office of the President of Ukraine and other colleagues in power would also appear on the air of the program.

Mistreatment of journalists

As press secretary to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Yulia Mendel repeatedly used physical force against journalists, particularly those who were considered critical of the Office of the President. In September 2019, she shoved Radio Liberty correspondent Serhiy Andrushko in order to shield Zelenskyy from a question. A video of the incident was published by American correspondent Christopher Miller. Miller later reported similar treatment by Mendel toward himself. According to him, Mendel grabbed him by the arm and back and began pulling him away, saying "We need to get some coffee," even though Zelenskyy had agreed to answer his question.

On September 28, 2019, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine called on the Office of the President and presidential press secretary Yulia Mendel to "reconsider their attitude towards journalists" and to apologize for her inappropriate conduct. On September 30, 2019, a group of journalists known as "Initiative 34" issued a statement demanding Mendel's dismissal for unprofessional behavior toward journalists, while the "Media for Conscious Choice" movement called on Zelenskyy to publicly respond to the obstruction of journalists' work by his spokesperson.

During a press marathon on October 10, 2019, Zelenskyy defended his subordinate, but stated: "If this happens once more — we will part ways."

Post-press secretary activities

On 11 July 2021, Mendel released her book Each of Us Is President in the Ukrainian publishing house Klub Simeinoho Dozvillia ("Family Leisure Club").

From 17 July 2021 to 4 September 2021, she worked as a journalist on the program Velyka Deoliharkhizatsiia ("Great De-oligarchization") on the television channel Ukraine 24. She also worked as a journalist on the program Real Politics with Yevgeny Kiselyov on Ukraine 24.

Following the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, on 13 September 2022 Mendel released the English-language book The Fight of Our Lives with the subtitle My Time With Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Battle for Democracy, and What it Means to the World. The book is dedicated to recollections of key events during the two years preceding the 2022 Russian invasion, ranging from meetings between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian president Vladimir Putin, which Mendel attended, to responses to press inquiries following the infamous phone calls between U.S. president Donald Trump and Zelenskyy. In her memoirs, Mendel also describes life in Ukraine during the war in detail. The book was published in the United States by Simon & Schuster. The Kyiv Independent described this book as "heaping praise" on Zelenskyy.

Calls to pause the war, even temporarily, in order to preserve the nation are often dismissed as naive, usually by those far from the front line. Critics argue: "Putin will attack again." However, this reasoning appears to require us to justify staggering human losses and the potential disappearance of Ukraine on the basis of a hypothetical future threat. In essence: die now to avoid possibly dying later. in which she called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, because the war was "draining us to our core". Mendel said "Russia has turned a third of Ukraine into a living hell. Imagine a life where Russian drones hunt people as if on a safari daily, as they do in my home region of Kherson". She argued Ukraine was "losing its nation": citizens fleeing as refugees, civilians and soldiers dying, and cities and infrastructure being destroyed. She said it was unrealistic "to exchange so many lives of Ukrainians ... for the illusion that NATO will invite us [to join] at some point". and that those living under Russian shelling are the most eager for "a ceasefire under any circumstances".

On 31 January 2026, Mendel accused former presidential office head Andriy Yermak of practising black magic involving cemeteries and water used to wash corpses.

Tucker Carlson interview

In May 2026, Mendel gave a lengthy interview to American conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, who promotes Russian disinformation and previously interviewed Vladimir Putin. In her interview, she sharply criticized her former employer Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his government. The ex-press secretary made claims that Ukraine's government is corrupt and called Zelenskyy one of the main obstacles to peace, accusing him of prolonging the war for his own benefit. although admitting she never saw this.

The interview drew widespread criticism in Ukraine. Ukrainian journalists and media professionals called the interview "trash", accused Mendel of inventing stories, and condemned her for blaming Zelenskyy for the war. The Kyiv Independent said that Carlson did not challenge any of her sensational claims, and noted that Mendel's remarks contradicted her earlier praise of Zelenskyy and echoed pro-Russian narratives. For example, The Kyiv Independent noted that Mendel told stories of Ukrainians dying of hunger and cold in their homes in the winter of 2025–2026 without mentioning the Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Foreign Minister of Ukraine Andrii Sybiha commented: "It is vile when such individuals are willing to humiliate their own state and grovel before Russian propaganda for the sake of 'fame'." By a ruling of the Kherson City Court on 1 April 2019, the information about bribery disseminated by Mendel was found to be false; the court ordered Mendel and the publication to issue a retraction. On 6 June 2019, Mendel appealed the ruling. In court, her lawyer argued that in the article "Mendel did not indicate either the first name or surname of her academic supervisor, did not intend to humiliate his honor, dignity or business reputation, and did not claim that the professor had taken money", although during the hearing in the court of first instance Mendel herself had stated the opposite. On 15 October 2020, the Kherson Court of Appeal recognized the bribery accusation as "Mendel's value judgment", granted her claims and overturned the lower court's decision. Professor Kovaliv's claims were dismissed

Article on Joe Biden's involvement in Viktor Shokin's dismissal

On 1 May 2019, The New York Times published an article by Kenneth P. Vogel and Iuliia Mendel. The article stated that in 2016 Vice President Joe Biden had helped push for the removal of Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who was criticized in the United States for obstructing anti-corruption reform. In the article, the journalists suggested that a possible motive for Biden's actions could have been an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, whose board included Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son.

In June 2019, CNN released a story about the conflict of interest of Mendel, who wrote a story for The New York Times in May while she was a candidate for the government position and kept it secret from the newspaper that she applied for the position. According to Ari Isaacman Bevacqua, a spokesperson for The Times, "had Mendel informed editors of her job application, they would not have given her that assignment, and we would have stopped working with her immediately given this serious conflict of interest". Iuliia Mendel denied any conflict of interest by stating that the vacancy for the position of spokesperson was announced on April 30 when the story was ready.

Recognition

Mendel became the first Ukrainian journalist to win the World Press Institute program.

In autumn 2019, she was included in the list of the 100 most influential women in Ukraine according to Focus magazine.

In March 2021, Mendel was included in the top 100 most successful women in Ukraine according to The New Voice of Ukraine magazine, in the "Government officials" category.

In 2023, she became a laureate of the international World Influencers and Bloggers Awards.

Personal life

She is in a relationship with former Deputy Minister of Economy Pavlo Kukhta (Honcharuk Government).