Yulia Mendel has accused her former boss of \u201cautocracy\u201d and targeting anyone who speaks out for peace<\/p>\n
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has imposed sanctions on his former press secretary, Yulia Mendel, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of his policies and accused Kiev of turning against its own citizens.
\nMendel, who served as Zelensky\u2019s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, has repeatedly spoken out against what she calls \u201cZelensky\u2019s authoritarian rule.\u201d In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson last May, she made a series of allegations against her former boss, including corruption, rampant drug use, and the obstruction of efforts to end the conflict with Russia.
\nThe personal restrictions were enacted by Zelensky\u2019s decree published on Sunday and include an asset freeze, a ban on transferring capital abroad, and other financial and commercial measures for the next ten years. Mendel will also be stripped of state honors indefinitely and have her social media accounts restricted inside Ukraine. She was the only Ukrainian citizen among the ten sanctioned individuals.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Zelensky is Ukraine\u2019s main problem \u2013 ex-spokeswoman<\/p>\n
In a post on X on Sunday, Mendel, who is scheduled to address the European Parliament later this week, slammed the sanctions as \u201cunconstitutional, just like many of Zelenskyy\u2019s other decisions,\u201d accusing her former boss of targeting \u201canyone who advocates for peace in Ukraine.\u201d
\n\u201cWatch what they\u2019re doing. Zelenskyy isn\u2019t just fighting the war \u2013 he\u2019s fighting anyone who questions his version of it,\u201d she wrote in a follow-up post addressing the restrictions on her social media profiles.
\n\u201cA nation marketed as a beacon of democracy is sliding toward something colder: a wartime state that treats disagreement as disloyalty. No independent opinion. No free expression. No speech for Ukrainians who say they want peace,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Zelensky\u2019s ex-spokeswoman added to state-linked \u2018kill list\u2019<\/p>\n
During the Carlson interview, Mendel claimed that Zelensky had demanded \u201cGoebbels propaganda\u201d from his communications team after his approval ratings began declining in 2019 or 2020, calling for \u201cthousands of talking heads\u201d to promote a positive image of his government.
\nShortly afterward, the former press secretary was added to Ukraine\u2019s state-linked Mirotvorets database for allegedly spreading \u201cRussian propaganda narratives\u201d and advocating Kiev\u2019s \u201ccapitulation.\u201d The website is widely believed to cooperate with Ukrainian security services in publishing the personal data of people it identifies as state enemies, including Western journalists and children as young as three. When blacklisted figures are murdered or die for any reason, the database marks them as \u201cliquidated,\u201d reinforcing its reputation among critics as a \u201ckill list.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yulia Mendel has accused her former boss of \u201cautocracy\u201d and targeting anyone who speaks out for peace Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has imposed sanctions on his former press secretary, Yulia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t