A New York City congressional candidate endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted on social media that the United States had been "bullying Russia ever since" the Cold War ended, one day before Russian missiles began striking Kyiv and Russian forces stormed into Ukraine.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, who hopes to unseat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the June 23 primary for a seat covering Upper Manhattan and the West Bronx, made the remarks in a since-deleted Feb. 23, 2022 post on Twitter/X. The exchange, first reported by Politico and covered by the New York Post, remains available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine even though Chevalier scrubbed it from her account.
The language she used tracks closely with the Kremlin's own talking points. And the deleted post is only one item in a growing catalog of incendiary social media statements now shadowing her campaign.
In the archived exchange, an unnamed user asked why the United States was "involved" in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Chevalier, then 28, replied:
"Cause the Cold War ended and we've been bullying Russia ever since."
She added: "Also war is lucrative for these sociopaths." Her spokesperson later refused to explain to Politico whom she meant by "sociopaths." A representative for Chevalier did not immediately respond to the Post's request for comment.
Compare her framing to what Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a Moscow speech less than a year earlier, in April 2021:
"Some countries have developed a nasty habit of bullying Russian for any reason or without any reason at all."
The word choice is nearly identical. The Kremlin has blamed the post-Cold War growth of NATO for its belligerence and has claimed the West is infringing on historically Russian territory. Chevalier's post landed the day before a full-scale invasion that has now stretched into a four-plus-year war, and her instinct was to blame America.
The Ukraine post is far from the only entry in Chevalier's social media record that would give voters in Upper Manhattan and the West Bronx reason to pause. The New York Post reported on a string of deleted and unearthed posts spanning years.
During the 2020 presidential election, Chevalier called Joe Biden a "rapist" and "war criminal." In August 2020, she retweeted a post that read "Israel suddenly disappears, your third emoji is your reaction," and replied: "Trick question, Israel doesn't exist!" She has rejected the existence of the state of Israel outright.
In 2022, she posted about U.S. service members, accusing them of committing "war crimes" and mocking homelessness among war veterans. In other posts, she used the phrase "f, ing disgrace" and referred to "fetishizing ugly colonizer women."
She has also called for the seizure of property from landlords and the abolition of police and prisons.
Taken together, the posts paint a picture of a candidate whose worldview runs far to the left of even deep-blue New York City, and whose reflexive hostility toward the United States, its military, and its allies mirrors rhetoric more commonly heard from adversarial governments than from someone seeking a seat in Congress.
Despite the growing controversy, Mayor Mamdani has stood by Chevalier and doubled down on his support. The two were spotted together at Game 1 of the NBA Finals, following the Knicks' 105-95 win over the San Antonio Spurs. An ad highlighting Mamdani's endorsements of Chevalier, former city Comptroller Brad Lander, and State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez in House primaries aired on WABC-TV.
Mamdani's willingness to keep backing Chevalier raises its own questions. A mayor lending his political brand to a candidate with this kind of public record is making a choice, and voters deserve to know what that choice says about the mayor's own judgment.
Chevalier formerly worked on Mamdani's mayoral campaign, so the relationship is not arm's-length. This is a candidate the mayor knows well, whose views he presumably understands, and whom he continues to promote even after the posts surfaced.
Incumbent Rep. Espaillat argued on WNYC Radio on Thursday that Chevalier's social media posts are the only record the public has on her. That is a fair point. She has no legislative record to examine, no voting history to parse, no committee work to evaluate. What voters have are years of unfiltered social media statements, and those statements tell a consistent story.
The June 23 primary will determine whether voters in Upper Manhattan and the West Bronx are comfortable sending someone to Congress who, on the eve of Europe's largest land war since 1945, instinctively reached for the Kremlin's excuse. Someone who denied Israel's existence. Someone who mocked homeless veterans. Someone who called for abolishing police and seizing private property.
Those are not positions plucked out of context. They are a documented trail, archived and available for anyone to read.
Chevalier deleted the posts. Her spokesperson dodged questions. Her representative went silent when the Post came calling. That sequence, post, delete, dodge, is its own kind of answer.
If Chevalier believed what she wrote, she should defend it openly. If she no longer believes it, she should say so and explain what changed. Silence paired with deletion is the move of someone who knows the record is indefensible but hopes voters never see it.
The Internet Archive made sure they can.
When a candidate for Congress sounds more like Vladimir Putin than like someone who wants to represent American constituents, voters don't need a pundit to tell them what that means. They just need to read the posts she tried to erase.
