Mendel says she was banned from entering the European Parliament ahead of her appearance at an AfD event

Former Ukrainian presidential spokeswoman Yulia Mendel said that on the day of her planned speech at the European Parliament building, she was denied entry without explanation.

She wrote about this on her Instagram on September 16.

Mendel was scheduled to speak at an event titled “Ukraine: Dare to Make Peace. Diplomacy Instead of Escalation,” held in Strasbourg in the Salvador de Madariaga building. The organizer and moderator was Hans Neuhoff, a member of the European Parliament from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

“Today, literally just a few hours before my speech at the European Parliament, I was banned from entering… without explanation,” Mendel wrote.

Despite the ban, she said she would speak regardless. “I know how many people have written to me. I am very grateful to each of you for your voice, for your desire for peace, and for wanting to show the whole world that Ukrainians want peace. That is why I believe that people and God are behind me. And that is why today I will speak about peace, even despite the ban from the European Parliament,” she said. According to Mendel, Zelensky imposed sanctions against her “to ban speech about peace.” Zelensky enacted the National Security and Defense Council sanctions against Mendel on September 13.

The event is not an official European Parliament occasion. A parliament spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Babel that members of parliament may hold such meetings in parliamentary premises in compliance with established rules, and that the content and composition of participants are determined by the organizers. The event was promoted by AfD, the party’s co-chair was to open it, and the poster features the logo of the Europe of Sovereign Nations parliamentary group — the newest and smallest far-right faction in the European Parliament, with 27 members out of 720, predominantly from AfD.

Event organizer Hans Neuhoff traveled to Sochi in 2025 for a conference organized by sanctioned oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk. Other participants in the discussion include Roger Köppel, who has referred to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as “containment” and in August 2026 recorded an interview with Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, as well as AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla, who consistently advocates closer ties with Moscow.

The official AfD announcement emphasized that Mendel had served as the Ukrainian president’s spokeswoman and would speak about the war and possibilities for ending it based on personal experience. Mendel held that position from June 3, 2019, to July 9, 2021.

After her resignation, Mendel wrote a book about her work in the Office of the President, and a number of statements in it provoked outrage on social media. In July 2021, she said she had sent the book to Kremlin presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. In December 2025, Mendel claimed that former head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak frequently misled Zelensky, prohibited Office of the President staff from carrying out the president’s orders, convinced him that a full-scale invasion would not happen, and also conducted “magical rituals,” for which he brought “sorcerers” from Israel, Georgia, and Latin America.

In May 2026, Mendel gave an interview to Tucker Carlson in which she put forward a number of talking points close to Russian propaganda narratives. Zelensky, commenting on the interview, called Carlson and Mendel “crazy people.” In August 2026, in an interview with the French weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Mendel called Zelensky “the main beneficiary of the war,” accused him of authoritarianism, alleged that corruption in his inner circle was being ignored, and criticized the mobilization process in Ukraine.