Zelensky's former press secretary speaks from exile about the Ukraine war
Tucker Carlson interviews Iuliia Mendel, former press secretary to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who describes the consequences she faced after her first interview with Carlson and makes the case for an immediate peace settlement.
Summary
Tucker Carlson interviews Iuliia Mendel, former press secretary to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a follow-up to an earlier interview that resulted in serious legal and financial consequences for her. Mendel describes being placed under Ukrainian government sanctions, having her bank accounts frozen, and facing potential treason charges carrying a sentence of 15 years to life. She was also physically barred from delivering a speech at the European Parliament — a ban she says was personally requested by Zelensky and carried out by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. Mendel argues that Ukraine is losing the war of attrition at an unsustainable rate — citing figures of approximately 27,000 soldiers killed or wounded monthly — and that Zelensky has no genuine interest in peace because the war sustains his power, his finances, and his international profile. She describes widespread forced conscription, torture in recruitment offices, and a demographic collapse that has reduced Ukraine's population from 52 million in 1991 to around 20 million today. She also raises allegations of corruption connected to Zelensky's inner circle, including wire-tapped conversations about billions of euros flowing to a company called Firepoint, and luxury mansions allegedly built for Zelensky and associates during the war. Mendel also describes her experience of Western media double standards, including having a peace article rejected by a major American outlet while the same outlet published a pro-war piece by a London professor who had never visited Russia or Ukraine.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Consequences of the first interview — sanctions, legal jeopardy, and the European Parliament ban
Tucker Carlson: Thank you for coming back, and I just want to say I'm sorry. I knew there would be repercussions for your first interview that you did earlier this year with us, and apparently there were. Can you tell us what happened after that interview aired?
Iuliia Mendel: Thank you for giving me the platform the first time and now, because right now Ukrainians are facing huge censorship everywhere, thanks to Volodymyr Zelensky. Our interview was trouble for me. After our interview, Zelensky ordered some kind of so-called linguistic expertise, and this is a corrupt practice that exists in the government of Ukraine that helps them prove something they want to prove in order to execute their political persecution. This linguistic expertise is still ongoing. However, I'm already under sanctions. If this linguistic expertise is finished, I'm going to face treason charges that in Ukraine under martial law can carry from 15 years of prison to a life sentence.
Let me explain why I am under sanctions. I was invited to give a speech in the European Parliament by the Alternative for Germany — the AfD — one of the most popular parties in Germany. This was supposed to be a speech about the necessity of peace for Ukraine. We announced this speech approximately on September 10th, and on September 13th, Zelensky imposed sanctions on me. What happened next was that when I arrived at the European Parliament on September 16th, when my speech was to take place, I was barred from entering. We were told they didn't know the reason, but that personally Roberto Metsola, who is the head of the European Parliament, had banned me from entering. They also tried to ban the video transmission, and they did not allow my speech to be translated into German or French. Thanks to the AfD, we managed somehow technically to have a video transmission and I even answered questions.
However, this shows a very serious problem. I had a lot of questions from Western journalists asking why Ukrainians don't speak about the necessity of peace. One journalist even told me he had a feeling that no one in Ukraine except Iuliia Mendel wanted peace. But I see this growing tendency, and I'm sitting here absolutely sure that the majority of Ukrainians want peace as soon as possible, because I got enormous support from everywhere — but nobody sees that. I thought the problem was that Ukrainians didn't have enough people to talk, enough contacts, enough experience or skills to reach bigger platforms. But it turns out there is simply censorship — a huge censorship. Nobody wants to listen to Ukrainians who call for peace.
To be frank, this is so heartbreaking and so disappointing, because Ukraine today looks to the European Union as a place of democracy and freedom of speech, but in fact it is very far from that reality. I'm under sanctions, which means I cannot make any financial operations in Ukraine — no buying or selling of properties, cars, nothing. My financial accounts are banned, my business accounts are cancelled and banned, and I cannot have any bank accounts today.
But there is another thing that Zelensky introduced in the sanctions: my three accounts on social media — Facebook, Instagram, and X. He requested that these accounts be banned from the Ukrainian audience, from the people who live in Ukraine. If it's possible, I would really love to address today the people who work at Meta and at X — not asking only for myself, but asking for all Ukrainians who are on a systematic basis banned from talking to Ukrainians inside Ukraine. This happens all the time. I know bloggers who repeatedly restart their pages because they call for peace, and then the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine requests that their accounts be banned from Ukrainians.
If it's possible, I just want to underline that for Ukrainians today, social media is the only way to talk about peace. If these accounts are banned — my accounts and the accounts of other Ukrainians — it actually disrupts any kind of communication, because Ukrainians today are discussing what the possibilities of peace are, how we see it, what the issues are for post-war Ukraine, what we can accept. This is the real matter, and I would really ask you to be attentive to this, because this is our way to show the world, to show journalists, to show politicians, that there is a necessity to have peace.
Tucker Carlson: It's such a remarkable story. I remember our interview very well, and in it you spoke as a Ukrainian, as a Ukrainian nationalist, as someone who loves Ukraine, as someone who was very critical of Russia and Vladimir Putin. You spoke directly to Putin in the interview — and not in a friendly way. You said, "Please stop." Nothing you said, nothing I've seen you say, is pro-Russian or anti-Ukraine. You're simply against watching your entire male population get killed. So I don't understand — how is that treason?
Iuliia Mendel: This is a very corrupt practice in Ukraine that actually allows politicians to persecute loyal people. Zelensky doesn't want anyone to talk about peace, because — you know — JT Benz once wrote a remarkable essay in the New York Times where he said that the math in Ukraine does not add up. Over two years have passed since that essay, and the math in Ukraine still doesn't add up. We lose people every day. We lose territories every day.
Just for your information — the latest we have: the Prime Minister of Poland said that his Ukrainian colleagues told him that Ukraine loses 27,000 soldiers killed and wounded monthly on the front line. Add to this only the verified UN numbers of killed and wounded civilians — around 3,000 — and we get around 30,000 Ukrainians, soldiers and civilians, dead or wounded every month. That's a terrible number.
If you think about the number of the population — in 35 years of independence, Ukraine has lost over half of its population. To be frank, the war of attrition with Russia is nothing but a suicidal policy, a suicidal war. I never justified what Putin has done, and I call his actions crimes against humanity. His cruelty is unimaginable. But it does not mean that what Zelensky is doing is good for Ukraine, because his policies are also suicidal — absolutely suicidal.
We counted the population in Ukraine, and right now we have a maximum of four million men of conscription age. In Russia there are 38 to 42 million men — ten times more. This is absolutely suicidal to continue this war.
And let me say that many people who support Ukraine think that if Ukraine continues this war, we will stay independent and preserve our sovereignty. But this is very much the reverse, because we are following the Afghanistan path. If this war continues, we have many more chances of becoming a vassal state and experiencing enormous degradation of society, economy, and everything — than if we try to find realistic paths towards peace today and then try to restore our economy, our democracy, have elections, try to return our people, and maybe later, with time, if we have good diplomats at the table, maybe — just maybe — we will be able to return the territories. But right now we are choosing between territories and people, and we are losing both. Most importantly, we are losing our people.
This was what I told in the European Parliament. After that, Roberta Metsola sent her chief of staff to the AfD. He tried to apologise to the organiser from the AfD, Mr. Hansov, and said that they had been told I was going to spread Russian propaganda. I'm a Ukrainian patriot. I have a lot of support from Ukrainians from every region today — messaging, comments, everything. People wanted this to be heard.
Another point: before this speech was banned, I tried to reach the chief of staff of Roberta Metsola. I wanted to talk to him. I was eager to show him the speech. But they didn't want to listen to anything. They just banned it based on information received from Ukraine. Some Ukrainians were writing that it was personally Zelensky who asked Roberta Metsola to ban me from giving the speech.
Now I'm facing a lot of attacks on social media. My accounts are being attacked. A lot of bots are there. They're even trying to ban my Telegram channel. I guess there is a huge amount of attention from the Office of the President. All his talking heads are attacking me. But there is a fight. At least there is a fight.
I need to tell you that our interview really opened a lot of things for Ukrainians. I got a lot of thanks. A lot of bloggers started talking more about what they see around them, about the necessity to stop the war. They said, "Thank you, Yulia, for your interview with Tucker Carlson. You opened our eyes." So I'm sitting here understanding that you are one of a few platforms where Ukrainians can speak about the necessity of peace — just to preserve ourselves as a nation, as a country, as an independent state.
Casualties, demographics, and the exploitation of suffering
Tucker Carlson: How many Ukrainians do you believe have been killed or wounded since this war began?
Iuliia Mendel: I think there are hundreds of thousands. And don't forget about millions of families that have been destroyed — because they've turned into refugees, or they lost someone, or there are people with lost limbs.
Something also very disturbing happened on that same day my speech was banned. Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, decided to give a speech in the European Parliament too, and she invited a Ukrainian girl — a ten-year-old girl who lost her limb due to Russian shelling. She's a dancer and she continues dancing. Ursula von der Leyen showed this girl and made PR out of her, and with this girl she justified the necessity to continue the war in Ukraine. It caused a lot of outrage.
Because I look at this girl, and this is the difference of perspective. I look at her and I beg for this war to stop, so that Ukrainian children don't lose their limbs or their eyes. My parents are doctors in frontline regions, and the stories they tell about children they receive in the hospitals are terrifying — wounds to the head, lost hands, a 23-day-old girl killed due to Russian shelling. Again, I'm not minimising Russia's guilt. The thing is that if we want to preserve Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation, we need to think about realistic ways to stop this war.
What I see Zelensky doing is that he keeps changing the conditions for peace. He also introduces maximalist, unachievable conditions for peace, and I don't believe he wants to achieve it at all.
Tucker Carlson: There have been calls from some in the neoconservative foreign policy community here in the United States and in Europe to start drafting women — because so many Ukrainian men have been killed — to draft Ukrainian women and send them into the front lines. Is that a popular idea in Ukraine?
Iuliia Mendel: It's not a popular idea to fight at all — neither for men nor for women. It caused a lot of hatred, a lot of outrage, and to be frank, a lot of desire to leave the country.
I'll remind you that after our interview I cannot return to Ukraine because there is a huge amount of attention to that question. However, I believe that if they move forward with further mobilisation of women and lowering the conscription age, there could really be a revolution. Ukrainians are at the verge.
Let me describe a few facts about how forced mobilisation is happening. According to the Ombudsman's data, only two to three percent of men who have been forcibly conscripted to the front line actually get to the fight. All others pay bribes. We calculated that the conservative count of bribes that exist in the sector of forced mobilisation — to avoid the front line — can reach up to five billion dollars annually. This is enormous corruption, and it is so enormous that we understand it is covered from the top. It cannot just exist at the middle or lower level.
Another thing that was discovered after our interview was that in conscription offices there is torture and beating, and some men die. This is so inhuman. On the streets of Ukraine today, women defend men. There is fighting sometimes. Sometimes men need to use their weapons against the state that tries to drag them to the front line or demand bribes. There is a huge opposition towards both the war and Zelensky's government.
So many men don't even leave their homes for weeks, months — and some men have been sitting in their houses for years — just to not be grabbed on the street, not to be beaten, not to be tortured, and not to be sent to the front line. I cannot imagine. This is my country. This is so painful. I cannot imagine how anyone could say this is Russian propaganda. This is everywhere. Every Ukrainian is standing against it. And I'm here to beg you to understand that only finishing this war can preserve Ukraine as a nation and as a state.
Elections, legitimacy, and Zelensky's hold on power
Tucker Carlson: We have been told in the West that democratic Ukraine is fighting tyrannical Russia, but there are no elections for president in Ukraine. If Zelensky were to allow an election, if he were to stand for election and let voters decide whether to keep him in office, would he win?
Iuliia Mendel: I'll tell you something that has only recently become public, though I knew it earlier. In June or July, Zelensky was thinking about conducting elections, but he didn't want to have free elections — he wanted them manufactured. So he invited the former Commander-in-Chief and his chief of staff, who enjoys some kind of rating today in Ukraine, and asked them not to run for the presidency but to support him as the only candidate of a potential alliance. At least one of them refused. And under any circumstances, no matter how corrupt the elections in Ukraine today might be, Zelensky doesn't have a chance to win them. He understood that he would lose elections.
Now we hear public statements that we cannot conduct elections. The first reason: we have a lot of people out of the country. The next reason: we have soldiers who cannot vote at the front line. The next reason: we have a lot of shelling, so we cannot organise elections. He will keep coming up with any kind of reason to explain to the public why elections are not possible. But I'll remind your audience that up to today he has been staying in power for seven and a half years. For him, finishing this war is a suicidal policy — it is political suicide. He's not going to stay in power. This war gives him money, gives him power, gives him red carpets and the fame that he enjoys.
Tucker Carlson: Why doesn't the United States — which is making this war possible through the targeting information it gives the Ukrainian military from our intelligence agencies — why doesn't the Trump administration force Zelensky to leave? He's not an elected leader. He's eliminated civil liberties and freedoms in Ukraine. Why not just tell him to leave and have an election? Russia had wartime elections. You can have wartime elections. It happens all the time. Why don't they do that?
Iuliia Mendel: I cannot answer for President Trump. But maybe he doesn't want to meddle in the politics of another country.
The problem is that since the last time we talked, President Zelensky changed strategy and convinced Western partners to pursue escalation, and this escalation has worsened the situation in Ukraine enormously. For us, for Ukrainians, it was really very strange to read American news during the first half of the summer, where American media outlets were saying that Ukraine was winning the war — because we were never even close to winning the war. We were suffering.
In July we had the record number of civilian deaths and wounded people since May 2022. What happened was that Russia started destroying our warehouses. We have over 90% of warehouses destroyed — with all the everyday needs that Ukrainians as ordinary people use, including food, clothes, gadgets, and many other things. We have destroyed gas stations. We have enormous ruins in our energy infrastructure. What Ukrainians are expecting is a humanitarian catastrophe in winter, and many are leaving today. The West should expect more refugees, and to be frank it is very inhuman not to accept them, because I don't know how people will be surviving without heat, without light, without food, in a country under shelling with autocratic rule where people can be grabbed on the streets and sent to the front.
European leaders, defence industry interests, and the war economy
Tucker Carlson: Why do you think so many European leaders want to join the war? Merz in Germany, Burnham in Great Britain, Macron in France — they've all said they're going to join this war with Ukraine. Why?
Iuliia Mendel: That's such an interesting question. So many people are asking me that, and I would really encourage my Western media colleagues and journalists to investigate more deeply what's happening behind the media publicity with all this arms production.
Just to explain to your audience how the distribution of aid for Ukraine works: if we are promised, for instance, 45 billion euros per year, around 30 billion of that money goes to arms production or weapons production, and the majority of this money doesn't go to Ukraine — it goes to the countries who actually distribute the money, so like Rheinmetall, for instance, or French producers. These weapons producers really enjoy enormous amounts of money.
As a PR person, I was following this enormous PR happening in the media, and I think that if we follow the money we can explain a lot of things. For instance, just before the NATO summit in Ankara in July, there were all these messages that Ukraine was winning the war. Then Mark Rutte announced 140 billion euros of aid, and within a week we didn't get any more messages about Ukraine winning. Within two weeks we started getting messages that Ukraine is losing, Ukraine doesn't have interceptors, a humanitarian catastrophe is approaching, and so on.
Then at the end of summer, we started reading a lot of news about the start of World War II, about Russia trying to attack NATO countries — though a lot of NATO officials were saying they don't see any kind of preparation for this. Again, I don't want in any way to flatter Russia or to justify what it is doing. But it is very strange to hear that a country that cannot cope with Ukraine — which is not in NATO, not in the EU, and doesn't even have its own fully functioning economy — would want to attack NATO countries.
Then we understood that at the same time as these media headlines were appearing, there was a discussion of the next seven-year EU budget from 2028 to 2034, and of course the defence budgets there are very attractive. Perhaps the European Union just wants to preserve those defence budgets, and to justify them in the media and to the public, they talk about World War II, they escalate the rhetoric. I'm just afraid of where it will lead us.
When I see the appetite of Europeans for war, I don't believe that Europeans actually want to fight. The rating of Mr. Merz, for instance, is at a record low of around 10% and getting lower. Then we have the AfD party that promotes peace and they break records of popularity, because people don't want war. People want their leaders to talk to Russia. People want their leaders to guarantee that there will be no war.
As a Ukrainian, I will tell you that many Westerners — ordinary people — look at this war as a Hollywood movie. And it is not. It is a disaster. It is a degradation of the morality of humanity. It is death. It is the worst thing that could happen to you.
I'll remind you of the story of how one American professor advised an American student to go to the front line in Ukraine. The guy went there. He was shocked by the reality. The professor planned to get him out, and then just sent a message to everyone saying something like, "Each one of us makes history in our own place." What is that? How many professors in America are actually trying to send their students to war? Don't do that. Help us stop the war.
Tucker Carlson: How many professors in the United States are serving on the front lines of the Ukraine war? How many neoconservative think tank employees are doing that? Is Zelensky volunteering to go fight his own war? Of course not. None of the people pushing this war are putting their own lives at risk. They're destroying an entire population for money, popularity, and power, but none of them are willing to die for it. Other people die for it.
Iuliia Mendel: If I may add — when Zelensky was not yet president, he was invited to join the front line in Donbas four times. And he did not do that. He declined. He avoided conscription. And now he is grabbing men on the street and sending them forcibly to the front line.
Tucker Carlson: Wait — Zelensky himself avoided conscription four times?
Iuliia Mendel: Yes, this is public information in Ukraine. So he is very far from Churchill, to whom he is compared.
There is another story. I come from mainstream media and I respect my colleagues who work there. But I had this very strange experience when I wanted to publish an article about peace. I sent it to a very famous American media outlet and they declined — without any explanation. I didn't have any attack on Zelensky in it. You may still read it online. There was nothing political. There was just a Gallup poll saying that the majority of Ukrainians wanted peace, and argumentation for why we needed either a ceasefire or peace, because we were simply declining and degrading as a nation. I was declined.
Some time later, I saw how the same media published a piece by a London professor who was actually justifying this war — saying how Russia is suffering, without mentioning how Ukraine was suffering, how many people we were losing. I Googled whether this professor had ever been to Russia or to Ukraine, and I was shocked to find that no, he had never been to either of these countries. He just gets his information from social media, and that's how he has some kind of imagination in his head of what's going on, and he produces this for your people, and your people believe that this war has some kind of justification.
What I understood after Zelensky convinced Western partners to pursue escalation is that in the West, many more people want Russia to burn than want Ukraine to be saved. And this is a terrible realisation, to be frank, because my country is dying in front of you and you keep applauding one man on a red carpet who sells you — I'm sorry to say — total nonsense, total lies. So I'm here to speak for Ukrainians. Please don't contribute to the escalation of this war. Please do everything to stop it, because we will disappear from the map.
Demographics, land ownership, and the disappearance of a nation
Tucker Carlson: As far as I understand, under Zelensky the Ukrainian legislative body made it legal for foreigners to buy Ukrainian farmland — that is now legal. And Zelensky has announced that Ukraine will be importing foreigners because they don't have enough manpower to run an economy. So it's possible that in ten years there will be no Ukraine — its land will be owned by foreigners and its population will be foreign. Nation gone.
Iuliia Mendel: Even without mentioning those facts, the math just doesn't work. We have around a little bit more than 20 million people staying in the country, down from 52 million in 1991. Around 12 million of these people are pensioners and people with disabilities. If you count down children, we almost have no workforce, and people are obviously leaving. We lost from 600,000 to 800,000 people only officially. Only officially, last year we had three times more deaths than births. This year, in the first half of the year, we had four times more deaths than births. The demography is just catastrophic.
And I'm absolutely sure that every American who is a patriot to his own country — if he or she were in this condition and saw their own country in this condition — would never agree to this. You would also be calling for peace to preserve the American nation. It is very patriotic to call for peace. It's not Russian propaganda. Peace cannot be pro-Russian. I want this to be heard. Peace cannot be pro-Russian.
Corruption allegations — Firepoint, wire taps, and luxury mansions
Tucker Carlson: Do you believe that Zelensky and his family have gotten richer during this war?
Iuliia Mendel: Let's just stick to facts. There is a company called Firepoint. If you just Google it, you will find that Kyiv Independent — a Ukrainian media outlet — figured out that there is a long-term business partner of Zelensky's staying behind this company. After our interview, there were wire taps that were published — unfortunately only in Ukraine — and on these wire taps, produced by anti-corruption bodies, there were dialogues between the Minister of Defence appointed by Zelensky and then the partner of President Zelensky, talking about billions of euros going to Firepoint.
Ukraine today is drowning in corruption. Corruption scandals about millions, tens of millions of dollars are sounding every day. There are businesses created just for money laundering — call centre businesses or gambling businesses where hundreds of millions of dollars can be laundered monthly.
I don't know if Zelensky is personally benefiting, or whether he pretends not to know, or genuinely does not know — but I guess we will need to learn a lot about his bank accounts after the war. I need to remind Americans that almost every person near Zelensky is accused of corruption. For instance, his chief of staff Andriy Yermak — the former chief of staff — is accused of ten million dollars in money laundering. For this money, he was building four luxury mansions in the Kyiv region. These mansions belong to three people who are very close to the Zelensky family, and the last mansion belongs to a person named Vova. Vova is a diminutive form of Volodymyr, and in the country there is a big question: who is Vova, who is building a luxury mansion in the Kyiv region? For the majority of people, the answer is that it's Volodymyr Zelensky's cottage.
The other thing which is very disturbing — what we've learned — is that he was building those mansions before the war, then when the large-scale invasion started he stopped, and they restored building the houses in March 2022. So while Ukrainians were sitting under Russian missiles, dying, not knowing what to do next, losing their houses, losing their hope, running away — Zelensky and his friends restarted building luxury mansions in the Kyiv region. For me personally, it tells a lot about a person.
Tucker Carlson: It's beyond belief to do something like that during a war in which your entire nation is being destroyed. It suggests he doesn't care about the nation. Do you think that Zelensky does care about Ukraine? And if he does, why is he continuing this?
Iuliia Mendel: I feel like he stands only for his own personal interests. Recently I was talking to one person who has known him for tens of years, who is very close to him. And this person said that he recognises that Zelensky is preserving himself by sacrificing thousands of Ukrainian lives. That's why the hatred towards Zelensky is so huge in the country. People don't accept what he is doing. They don't accept the escalation.
That is why it's so important that voices from Ukraine are heard on platforms like yours or in the European Parliament. It is really heartbreaking that we are banned, that nobody hears that Ukrainians want peace — and this is the majority. The latest Gallup poll said that 66% of Ukrainians want peace as soon as possible.
Every next peace deal for Ukraine is worse than the last, because we lose more territories, it becomes more difficult to get territories back, and we lose more people — and we're not going to return those people. Our economy is in enormously bad shape because the European Union gives us loan after loan. Our external debt is already equal to 110% of GDP. And here is another bad piece of math: Russia has not even borrowed for this war. So how are we expecting a military victory from a country that doesn't have enough people, doesn't have an economy, is losing its democracy, and is a cage — against Russia, which has resources, which still continues trade with the EU, and which has so much more to sustain this war of attrition?
We had a very famous singer in Ukraine just giving an interview, and she said that Ukraine looks to her like a concentration camp. So many people supported her. She got enormous support. But after that she also got some calls from political circles and she needed to apologise and say that she did not mean that. Everything that is said against policies in Ukraine, or critical of Volodymyr Zelensky, is announced to be Russian propaganda — the same way as my speech was in the European Parliament. We are just banned from having freedom of expression, freedom of speech, the ability to criticise or disagree. Everything that a good Ukrainian patriot can do, according to Zelensky, is just die for his own country. That's what Zelensky suggests we do.
How does Zelensky think this ends?
Tucker Carlson: How do you think Zelensky thinks this will end?
Iuliia Mendel: I don't think he is thinking about ending this war. Around the same time he understood that elections were not possible, Mr. Yermak — who is still advising Volodymyr Zelensky and meeting him at home — said that it's better just to continue the war for the next two years, because Zelensky and Yermak and his government are sure that they have allocated military aid for the next two years.
This is a disastrous type of thinking, because unfortunately they are very bad at math again — because even in August and September there is this call that Ukraine lacks 27 billion dollars for this year. He wants to take the money from next year, and this is what he has done from the previous year. Ukraine just doesn't produce any added value. Our metallurgy sector has been worn out. Our agriculture is bombed out and severely restricted by European Union quotas and many other reasons. Metallurgy and agriculture were our two major export sectors. Today we just don't produce any added value, any innovation, any science — except for military drones.
There is a huge militarisation of society, a radicalisation of society, and what I see is not the Ukraine that I was proud of. It's just a Ukraine that is degrading every day. My point is that anything that can be done today to stop this war and to restore politics, elections, the country, demography, economy, democracy — it needs to be done today. There is no better condition for peace than now. Zelensky promises you better conditions, but it will never happen. There are no better conditions for peace than now.
Why Zelensky escalates attacks inside Russia
Tucker Carlson: My last question is: if it's clear that Ukraine can't win because the numbers don't add up — as you said, and as has been obvious since the very first day — why is Zelensky accelerating the attacks on Russian targets within Russia, Russian energy infrastructure, refineries, civilians? What is his thinking? Why would he do that?
Iuliia Mendel: This is how he gets money, right? He sends to Firepoint. Russia burns, he gets money for videos and photos of burning Russia. Meanwhile, people are unprotected. 93% of our shelters cannot defend anyone. We don't have closed skies. The only thing that authorities today tell people in frontline regions is: leave. They don't offer any kind of financial aid. They don't offer any shelter in any houses. Nothing. What they offer is: leave.
Ukrainians are surviving by themselves. The money that Western people are sending — Western taxes — they don't help Ukrainians today. That's the point. What they help is to produce more weapons. Firepoint is the major one that Zelensky is advertising, but there are some other companies too. This is just business. And this is business in blood.
Tucker Carlson: This is awful and disgusting. That's why you're here. Thank you for giving me this — and thank you for telling it. You have firsthand knowledge, and I'm grateful. I hope many people see this, and I wish you safety.
Iuliia Mendel: Thank you very much. Thank you, Tucker.