Former Volodymyr Zelensky spokeswoman Yulia Mendel gave a lengthy interview to American journalist Tucker Carlson in which she spoke about working with the Ukrainian president, the Istanbul negotiations, and rumors surrounding his alleged drug use.
According to Mendel, in 2019 or 2020 Zelensky became concerned about falling approval ratings and believed his communications team was not promoting “positive news” aggressively enough. The president, she claims, demanded that his staff conduct propaganda “like Goebbels.”
“The most important thing is—we need 1,000 talking heads. And if 1,000 talking heads speak about positive things, then positive things happen, and people believe there are positive things,” Mendel recalled the president saying.
Officials in the presidential office, she said, tried to push back by pointing to unfulfilled promises. One discussion focused on displaced people from Donbas who had been promised housing—a pledge that was never fulfilled. Zelensky’s response, according to Mendel, was: “No, if the talking heads, if a thousand people tell you it is happening, then it is happening.” She says the president then added: “I need Goebbels propaganda, if you want. I need thousands of talking heads spreading Goebbels propaganda.”
Mendel also addressed the 2022 Istanbul negotiations. According to her, the Ukrainian side at the time was prepared to agree to handing over Donbas in exchange for ending the war. The former spokeswoman said she spoke with people who represented Ukraine during those talks.
“I spoke with people who represented Ukraine at the Istanbul negotiations in 2022. And they explained to me in detail that they agreed to everything. Moreover—and this is very important—they said that Zelensky personally agreed to give up Donbas,” she said.
According to Mendel, such an option was viewed as a way to stop the fighting. “He agreed to give up territory because it would have meant the end of the war,” she said. At the same time, she accused the president of later changing his position on Donbas: “And now he stands before a multimillion audience and says: ‘I cannot give up Donbas.’ You see, he is inconsistent. He changes positions all the time… I have no personal vendetta, but I believe Zelensky today is one of the biggest obstacles to peace.”
The third topic raised by the former spokeswoman involved rumors about the president’s alleged cocaine use. “People who have known Zelensky for 20–25 years say he uses cocaine,” Mendel said. She added that she personally never saw the president use drugs, but acquaintances who had previously encountered him in clubs told her about cocaine use. Mendel also mentioned meeting a member of Kvartal 95 who, she was told, supplied cocaine to Zelensky.
The former spokeswoman also pointed to what she described as unusual behavior by the president: from time to time, he would disappear into a restroom or bathroom for around fifteen minutes and return “energized and charged up.”
Mendel separately recalled an episode from the 2019 presidential campaign. At the time, Petro Poroshenko challenged his rival to take a drug test, and Zelensky agreed. It later emerged, however, that the published results carried a different date from the one originally scheduled for the test.