Ukraine charges Zelensky's former spokeswoman Iuliia Mendel with treason in absentia after she called him a dictator

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) and the Prosecutor General's Office have notified Iuliia Mendel, President Volodymyr Zelensky's press secretary from 2019 to 2021, that she is suspected of high treason and of justifying Russia's aggression, Kyiv Post, Interfax-Ukraine and UNN report. The SBU says her public statements and posts discredit Ukraine and justify the Kremlin's war. She lives abroad, reportedly in the United States, so the notice was issued in absentia.

A notice of suspicion is not a conviction, and she is presumed innocent. Mendel turned on her old boss this year. In a May interview with Tucker Carlson she called Zelensky a dictator, citing the ban on military-age men leaving the country. Kyiv sanctioned her in September and blocked her social media accounts inside Ukraine, Kyiv Post reports.