Yuliia Mendel found out she was under sanctions on a Sunday. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, signed a decree on Sept. 13 that hit ten people, accusing them of spreading Russian propaganda. Mendel, who had been his first press secretary, answered on Facebook that using sanctions on Ukrainian citizens breaks the constitution. The measures run for 10 years and include asset freezes and trade restrictions, Reuters reported.
Her case landed in a debate that has been running for years. The tool is the sanctions procedure run through the country’s security council, the NSDC, and the people it reaches are increasingly Ukrainians, not foreigners.
How a decree gets made
RBC-Ukraine, which examined the mechanism in May 2025, described the steps. A proposal can come from four places: the government, the central bank, a ministry or the Security Service (SBU), which files most of them. Council members vote, and a decree signed by the president puts it into effect.
The law, RBC-Ukraine noted, does not say what a submission should contain or what evidence must back it. Decrees themselves vary: some leave out the person’s citizenship, others add place of birth or passport numbers. Oleksandr Leshchenko, a lawyer who represents sanctioned Ukrainians in court, called that gap a legal vacuum, one that produces “arbitrary restrictions” imposed without proper evidence.
The scale of it
More than 1,500 people were under Ukrainian sanctions at that point, RBC-Ukraine reported. About two-thirds held Russian citizenship and had left the country long before. The newer pattern is different. In the previous year, 135 Ukrainians who hold no second passport were added, bringing the wartime total for that group to 188.
The penalties reach into daily life. Those sanctioned cannot use their property, manage bank accounts, hold official jobs or launch media outlets, and they cannot even ride Ukrzaliznytsia trains. Terms were originally three years; more recently they have stretched to ten. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, who handles sanctions policy for the president, said work was under way to let sanctioned people cover basic needs such as food, housing and medical care.
What the critics say
Leshchenko argues the Law “On Sanctions” is aimed at foreign entities and permits Ukrainian targets only in narrow circumstances, such as involvement in terrorism. Sanctions without a court finding of guilt, he says, breach the presumption of innocence in Article 62 of the Constitution. Maryna Stavniychuk, a Venice Commission member from 2009 to 2013, recalled that the practice began under Petro Poroshenko, and that lawyers warned then it needed judicial review. “Those warnings were ignored,” she said.
Poroshenko is now one of the targets. Sanctioned in 2025, his assets were frozen and he was barred from taking capital out of the country, which the spy agency justified on national security grounds. Lawyer Rostyslav Kravets pointed to the practical effect: Poroshenko cannot pay taxes, stand for a party or set up an election fund. Others on the list include Oleksiy Arestovych, journalist Svitlana Kryukova and the oligarchs Ihor Kolomoyskyy, Hennadiy Boholyubov and Kostyantyn Zhevago.
Dmytro Razumkov, a former parliament speaker who sat on the council and opposed personal sanctions on citizens, described one flaw from the inside. In some cases the council decided first and the presidential decree came only days later, giving the targets time to move property and funds to nominees.
Reuters noted that political figures have been sanctioned before, but a former member of the president’s own staff is unusual. Mendel claimed that Zelenskiy is using them against anyone who advocates for peace. The presidency’s statement described the order differently: restrictions on ten individuals who spread disinformation and support Russia’s aggressive policy.
Sources
- RBC-Ukraine: how the NSDC sanctions mechanism works, part 1
- RBC-Ukraine: how the NSDC sanctions mechanism works, part 2
- Ukraine's Zelenskiy imposes sanctions on former press secretary (Reuters)
