Iuliia Mendel, who served as spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from 2019 to 2021, has urged him to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin face-to-face in Moscow. She argued that his professional and business connections in the Russian capital, built during his years as an entertainer, could give him leverage to negotiate a lasting peace.
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Mendel said Zelenskyy often performed in Moscow during his comedy career and knows many people within Putin's circle. "He actually professionally grew in Moscow and earned his first millions in Moscow, and today he pretends that he has nothing in common with them," she said. She added that he "needs to go to Moscow and needs to agree on compromises that are acceptable," and said he should drop what she called maximalist positions.
Her remarks came as Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepared for another round of technical-level peace talks, potentially in Abu Dhabi or Switzerland, in November. U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have helped lay groundwork for renewed negotiations that officials hope could eventually lead to direct talks between the two leaders.
Before entering politics, Zelenskyy built a career in entertainment. Beginning in the late 1990s, he performed with the comedy troupe Kvartal 95, competed on the Russian-language comedy program KVN, and later worked as an actor, writer and producer in television and film. Mendel said that after Russia annexed Crimea and launched its war in Donbas in early 2014, Zelenskyy traveled to Russia to work on the comedy film "Eight New Dates," released in Russian theaters in 2015.
Reporting cited by Business Insider indicates many of Zelenskyy's films were in Russian and marketed to Russian audiences. David Dodson, an American movie editor who worked with him, said, "He was a well-loved comic, actor and performer in Russia, but after [the 2013-14] Maidan [Revolution], everything changed." In 2019, Zelenskyy promised to relinquish ownership of a Cyprus-registered company operating a film studio in Russia after investigative journalists revealed that he and his business partners still owned three Russian companies, according to the Kyiv Post.
Zelenskyy's entertainment career made him a household name in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics before he won the 2019 presidential election with roughly 73% of the runoff vote. He campaigned on promises to fight corruption and pursue peace in eastern Ukraine. Mendel contrasted that pledge with the war that has defined much of his presidency. "Zelenskyy became the president with 73% record support," she said. "Because he promised to bring peace to Ukraine. And now he has been presiding for almost five years over the largest war in Europe since World War II."
Whether Zelenskyy should travel to Moscow has become a flashpoint in efforts to arrange direct talks. In 2025, Putin offered to host him in Moscow, but Zelenskyy rejected the invitation while Russian forces continued attacking Ukraine. "He can come to Kyiv," he told ABC News at the time. In September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, asked by Russian journalists when he would visit Moscow, he replied, "On a missile."
Mendel argued that personal animosity between the two leaders has become the main obstacle to diplomacy. "What we see now is a personal opposition between Zelenskyy and Putin that continues to grow into constant escalation in which people suffer tremendously," she said, citing damage to Ukraine's infrastructure, energy grid and businesses, and refugees fleeing the country. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. More than four years later, negotiations remain deadlocked over territory, security guarantees and the terms of a lasting ceasefire. Moscow has demanded territorial concessions from Ukraine, including areas Russian forces do not fully control, and Kyiv has rejected ceding sovereign territory.