Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree enacting sanctions against ten people, including his former press secretary Yulia Mendel and nine Russian citizens, according to Decree No. 901/2026 published on the website of the Ukrainian Presidential Office.
The decree puts into effect a decision taken by Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council on September 13, 2026, to apply personal sanctions. The council is Ukraine's top security body, chaired by the president, and its decisions take legal effect once enacted by presidential decree. The restrictions were proposed by the Security Service of Ukraine, the country's main domestic security and counterintelligence agency, known by its Ukrainian acronym SBU.
The sanctions will remain in force for ten years, though some elements, including the stripping of state awards, are indefinite. Most of those named face the full range of measures allowed under Ukraine's sanctions law, including the blocking of assets, a ban on trade operations, measures to prevent the outflow of capital, a ban on entering Ukraine and other restrictions.
Mendel singled out for social media restriction
Mendel is the only Ukrainian citizen on the list. In addition to the standard measures applied to her, the decree includes a specific restriction blocking access from Ukrainian territory to her accounts on Instagram, X and Facebook.
Mendel served as Zelensky's press secretary from his election as president in 2019 until July 2021.
Nine Russian nationals also sanctioned
The other nine people named in the decree are Russian citizens: Svitlana Larina, Izabella Liberman, Diana Malyk, Oleksandr Minieiev, Oleksii Plotnykov, Oleh Rezepkin, Maria Rumiantseva, Sofiia Sambulova and Yevhen Strunkin.
Mendel calls the sanctions unconstitutional
Mendel responded to the decree in a Facebook post. She said that a few days before her scheduled speech in the European Parliament, Zelensky, her former boss, had imposed sanctions on her.
She said she had suspected a decision against her was being prepared after she gave an interview to the American journalist Tucker Carlson, and that she had earlier considered sanctions a possibility.
Mendel described the sanctions against Ukrainian citizens as unconstitutional and said Zelensky was punishing people who support a peaceful settlement of the war. She said this would not change her position or that of millions of Ukrainians, adding that Ukraine needed peace to survive rather than another dictatorship, even, she said, a dictatorship led by Zelensky. She linked the sanctions to her public stance and to her interview with Carlson.
Carlson interview and the presidential office's response
In her earlier interview with Carlson, Mendel called Zelensky one of the biggest obstacles to peace and said Ukraine was on the verge of extinction. She also claimed that Ukrainian authorities had been willing to cede the Donbas region during 2022 negotiations with Russian representatives in Istanbul.
Dmytro Lytvyn, the presidential adviser on communications, told journalists that Mendel had not been involved in the negotiation process. He said she had not taken part in the talks or in decision-making, had not been herself for a long time, and that it was not serious to comment on whoever might be telling her things or whether any of it was true.
