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Ukraine has pushed back on claims made by Zelenskyy’s former press secretary during an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Getting into it: Yulia Mendel, who held the press secretary job under Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from 2019 to 2021 and stepped away from the post months before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, has spent the past months emerging as one of Zelenskyy’s most outspoken critics and recently sat down for a high-profile interview with Tucker Carlson that was posted on his YouTube channel. In the interview, Mendel claimed that members of Ukraine’s 2022 Istanbul peace negotiation delegation had been ready to accept “all of Russia’s demands” in order to stop the war and that Zelenskyy personally signed off on giving up the Donbas.

She provided no documents, evidence, or named sources to back the claims, citing only anonymous people who had supposedly represented Ukraine at the talks.

Mendel also leveled a string of other accusations during the interview, including claims of widespread cocaine abuse in top Ukrainian leadership, allegations that Zelenskyy has become a “dictator” who has grown “detached from reality,” and a description of Zelenskyy and former chief of staff Andriy Yermak as “malicious and extremely paranoid narcissists” whose relationship has turned into a “symbiosis.” She argued that Kyiv had been pressured by the US and UK to continue the conflict and described Zelenskyy as “one of the main obstacles to peace.”

At the end of the interview, Mendel switched to Russian and, in tears, appealed directly to Putin over drone strikes on civilians in her native Kherson region. “Slavs are killing Slavs,” she said. “There must be limits to humanity! One decree from you can stop this.”

Zelenskyy’s office moved quickly to reject the substance of the claims, with Presidential Communications Advisor Dmytro Lytvyn telling reporters that Mendel was never part of the talks and didn’t have access to any high-level state decisions. “This woman did not participate in the negotiations, did not participate in decision-making, has long been out of her mind, and as for who is telling her things there and whether it actually happened—it’s not worth commenting on.”

The head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation also pushed back. “Anyone (I’m referring to Mendel) can voice conspiracy theories in their own interest about ‘giving up Donbas in 2022,’ citing some sources. But the fact remains—Ukraine has been fighting for its territory since 2014. The question of abandoning territories has never been on the table and never will be.”