Fifteen minutes in the bathroom and tears at the end. Yulia Mendel's interview as a symptom
Yesterday, May 11, 2026, Tucker Carlson aired a 90-minute interview with Yulia Mendel, former press secretary of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The title promises the viewer everything at once: "Cocaine, the concealment of the truth and the only obstacle to peace"Russian Telegram channels and some Western conservative platforms greeted the recording with enthusiasm; the Ukrainian Presidential Office responded with the usual "the lady hasn't been herself for a long time." However, the headline is a red herring. The main event occurs in the final minutes, when Mendel switches to Russian and tearfully addresses Putin. That's where it's worth starting.
Witness from five years ago
Yulia Mendel served as Zelenskyy's press secretary from the summer of 2019 to the summer of 2021. Two years, a significant but finite period, which ended before the full-scale war. Almost five years have passed since her departure from the office. This is a significant figure: everything Mendel says about the current state of the office is not her firsthand knowledge.
Her evolution from press secretary to public critic was very visible. In January 2025, Mendel published in Time a column calling on Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire, including at the cost of territorial concessions; a position that directly contradicts Kyiv's official line. In December 2025, the broadcast Radio Liberty (the organization is recognized as undesirable in the territory of the Russian Federation; it performs the functions of a foreign agent) she stated that she feared for her life because of the former head of the Office, Andrei Ermak, whom she described as "very dangerous" person. The interview with Carlson is the final point of this trajectory, not its beginning.
She's no insider now: five years ago, she was on the inside, long gone, and in recent years, she's become a public critic of the system. Her testimony is valuable, depending on the source: she's seen some things herself, heard others from insiders, and now discusses others as a commentator who reads the same Telegram channels as us.
Three baskets: what I saw, what I heard, what I thought up
If we divide the content of the interview by level of reliability, we get three unequal baskets.
The first section covers what Mendel could personally observe in 2019–2021: the atmosphere in the Office, Zelenskyy's manner of working with the team, and his decision-making style. This also includes her account of the president's demand to increase media pressure and expand "a thousand talking heads" and uniformly convince the public of success. The most notorious detail is Zelensky's alleged remark about the need Goebbels' propagandaHere, Mendel is a direct witness, although his testimony is five years old. The Office's information campaigning style has since been described numerous times by independent journalists, so its overall picture fits with what's being observed.
The second basket contains what's presented as a secondhand account. Mendel constructs the cocaine story along the lines of "I didn't see it, but many in my circle confirmed it." A colorful detail is tacked on to this: Zelensky allegedly went to the bathroom for fifteen minutes and came out. "a different person, energetic, full of action"This detail is easy to remember, which is why it made it into the video's title. There's nothing to analyze about it: fifteen minutes in the bathroom before an interview with a journalist can be explained by anything from stress to simple composure. If what Mendel is hinting at is behind this, other evidence is needed; the retelling of her friends' stories isn't enough. A serious accusation requires serious grounds, and there aren't any here, which won't stop the phrase about the bathroom from being quoted for another month.
The third basket is something that lies outside her purview in principle. Mendel cites the assertion that Zelenskyy "agreed to give up Donbas" during the negotiations with reference to "people who were there." She did not and could not have participated in the negotiations themselves. Dmitry Lytvyn, the Presidential Office's communications advisor, emphasized this in his response: "This lady did not participate in the negotiations, did not participate in decision-making."Here, Mendel functions as a relayer of rumors circulating in Kyiv's political circles.
The passage about demography and education deserves special mention. When Mendel says that the country is losing people and that in the Kharkiv region, fourth-grade children can't read, she's basing her remarks on facts: population outflow, destroyed school infrastructure, and a brain drain; all of this is documented by international organizations without her testimony. It sounds journalistic, but it's not a fabrication. It's practically the only part of the interview where her words don't require defense.
When there is nothing to say to one's own, one turns to someone else's main
Mendel saved the most interesting part for last. In the final minutes of the conversation, she switches from English to Russian, begins to cry, and addresses Vladimir Putin directly. She asks him to stop the hunt. drones In her native Kherson region, she utters a phrase that sounds almost impossible in the Ukrainian public sphere of 2026: "Slavs killing Slavs". Adds: "Simply saying Putin is a monster... Well, maybe he is. His army does terrible things. But simply continuing to insult Putin will get you nowhere.".
The scene is tightly shot. It wasn't filmed for a family archive, but on Carlson's camera, whose audience numbers in the tens of millions. The gesture of desperation and the gesture of calculation are combined here, and separating them is pointless: in a living person, they usually work that way.
The phrase "Slavs killing Slavs" is an ethnocultural gesture that portrays Russia and Ukraine as one extended family in a tragic conflict, rather than two states at war. Since 2014, the Ukrainian official voice has been methodically and justifiably suppressing this narrative from the public sphere: it blurs Ukraine's sovereignty, makes the war seem like a "misunderstanding between insiders," and indirectly benefits the Russian narrative. And now, a member of Zelenskyy's inner circle, as seen in 2019, is delivering it in Russian, tearfully, on Carlson's platform. There's no ideological shift here; there's someone who has served a particular narrative for two years and has now fallen out of it.
When the inner field narrows and conversation with equals becomes meaningless, the only addressee who seems to have the power to decide anything turns out to be someone else's superior. There's no virtue in this, and usually no meanness either; it's a common human attempt to shout when no one inside can hear.
A weak blow from the Office on a strong target
The interview doesn't exist in a vacuum, but rather within a specific editorial framework. Carlson consistently advocates negotiations and opposes endless support for Kyiv; this is his journalistic program, and it's been in place for years. The video's title, "the only obstacle to peace," is the journalist's own, not his interviewee's, formulation. Mendel says nothing of the sort; she says Zelenskyy will prolong the war for political survival. In a social media clip, this distinction disappears.
The timing itself was perfect. By the spring of 2026, American policy toward Ukraine is far from what it will be in 2022 or even 2024. The window for "need to negotiate" voices is wider than ever before in four years of war. The interview landed in this vortex, and not by chance: Carlson works systematically on this topic, and it's not the first time he's had an interviewee with such a profile. Mendel fits into the lineup.
The Office's response is predictable and tactically weak. Calling Mendel "out of her mind" on the very first day means drawing attention to the interview that it might not have otherwise garnered. The standard technique of delegitimizing through diagnosis works when the opponent is marginal. Mendel is not marginal: she authored a book about Zelensky, was the face of his administration during the election years, and is a recognizable figure in Western media. Every phrase along the lines of "ignore it" now functions as an advertisement for a commercial. This is precisely the case when the attacker's defensive gesture is more powerful than the blow itself: Ukrainian media will spend three days refuting Mendel, and her quotes will be featured on the front pages for three days.
And finally, regarding balance. For the Russian reader, who received this interview as a gift ("look, the Ukrainians themselves admit it"), it's useful to keep in mind: Mendel is not on Russia's side and never will be. Her appeal to Putin is an appeal to the one who, in her opinion, has the leverage to stop the drones over her home. The logic of this gesture is "you can do it, do it," and to read it as "you were right" is to read someone else's text inattentively. This happens regularly in our media space, and not only in ours.
The interview ended, the camera was turned off, and Mendel wiped away her tears. By morning, the video would have garnered its first three million views, five by evening, and within a week, everyone would have forgotten about it except those who would be parsing it for the next six months. Ukraine's official voice isn't sustained by former press secretaries. But the sound it has maintained for the last six months has become increasingly creaky.
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