Life.ru says "after Zelensky's order"; its own text says no reason was given

What is claimed. Yuliia Mendel, a former spokesperson for Ukraine's president, says she was refused entry to the European Parliament building on 16 September. She says she was told at the entrance that her pass was blocked. She posted a recording of that exchange.

One account, three causes. All three reports rest on her statement. They differ on why she was stopped.

Who invited her. One report of three names the host: an event of the AfD party, with Mendel saying she will speak online instead. Life.ru describes the planned remarks only as a speech "on the need for a peaceful settlement", and names no host. RIA Novosti carries a headline and no text at all.

Not settled. Why the pass was blocked, and by whom. No report we hold names anyone who took the decision, and none carries a response from the European Parliament. The link to sanctions is Mendel's own; nothing we hold confirms a cause.

What this is about. A former spokesperson for Ukraine's president says she was stopped at the door of the European Parliament in Brussels on 16 September and told her pass was blocked.

How it got here. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, seizing Crimea and backing armed separatists in the east, and launched a full-scale invasion of the rest of the country in February 2022. That war is still being fought. Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in 2019 and has governed under martial law since the full-scale invasion began. Yuliia Mendel was his press secretary in the first part of that term, before the invasion, and has since worked as a commentator rather than for the government. Ukraine, like the European Union and the United States, maintains its own sanctions lists; a Ukrainian president can impose them by decree on the recommendation of the national security council, and Ukrainian sanctions have been used against citizens as well as foreigners. Whether any such measure touches Mendel, and whether it has anything to do with a door in Brussels, is her claim and not an established fact.

Who is involved. Mendel, who made the statement and published a recording of the exchange. The European Parliament, the European Union's directly elected chamber, which controls access to its own buildings and issues the passes that open them; none of the reports we hold carries any word from it. The AfD — Alternative für Deutschland, a German party that sits in the Parliament — named by one of the three reports as the host of the event she was to attend. And the Russian outlets that carried the story, on a desk where the Russian state's account and Ukraine's own are routinely at odds.

What is at stake. Who may speak inside an EU institution, and on whose say-so. If a national government's list can close that door, that is one story; if the Parliament's own security acted for its own reasons, it is another.

Where it stands. Unresolved. No report we hold names who blocked the pass or why, and the Parliament has not been heard from.