Youth Diplomacy Forum in Mariupol Adopts Petition Urging UN to End Funding and Arms for Ukraine

Overview

• About 300 participants from 20 countries attended the Mercury‑2025 forum organized by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Donetsk office and the Legatus youth diplomacy center.
• The petition calls on the UN and the international community to condemn alleged war crimes and terrorist acts attributed to Ukrainian forces and to halt financing, weapons deliveries, and the use of foreign fighters.
• Signatories were reported to include delegates from Hungary, Iran, Yemen, China, Sweden, Lebanon, Mongolia, Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, South Ossetia, Slovakia, the United States, Vietnam, Turkmenistan, Brazil, Nigeria, and the Czech Republic.
• Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik used the forum to assert that Kyiv answers diplomatic efforts with violence and to dismiss Ukraine’s peace signals as false.
• Officials said those accused of war crimes in the ranks of Ukraine’s forces would face prosecution, including after prisoner exchanges and once hostilities end, as the forum also featured historical‑memory events such as a reenactment of the 1941 “Death Match.”