A group of 15 young visitors from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe toured the Russian-occupied parts of Donetsk Oblast as guests of the International Festival of Youth. These participants posted Instagram videos showing the war-ravaged region as a travel destination. One visitor, Indonesian law graduate Nor Arif Prastyo, shared a photo of himself with a rifle and wrote, "First time ever holding a gun and the only instruction I got was in Russian, also didn’t expect the recoil to hit THIS hard."
The festival budget and propaganda goals
The Russian state funds the International Festival of Youth through the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, known as Rosmolodezh. For 2026, the Russian World Youth Festival Directorate received 4.7 billion rubles ($57 million), which is nearly five times the funding from the previous year, according to the federal budget reported by Agentstvo. The main event in Yekaterinburg brought together approximately 10,000 participants, half of whom came from abroad. President Vladimir Putin addressed the opening ceremony online on Sept. 13.
Organizers favored applicants who could create social media content for their audiences, according to a source with direct knowledge of the program. This source said, "Consider it a quid pro quo: they get to travel to Russia for free, but they must only say good things about Russia." The festival mission aims to shape "a multipolar world," a term the Kremlin uses to describe an international order that limits Western dominance. Professor Andrey Makarychev from the University of Tartu told the Kyiv Independent that the Kremlin uses these cultural events to normalize the ongoing war and demonstrate the futility of Western attempts to isolate Russia.
Staged tours of occupied territories
After spending four days in Yekaterinburg, the delegation traveled to Donetsk, Makiivka, and Mariupol. The group visited the Mariupol Drama Theater, which Russia rebuilt after an air strike in March 2022 killed civilians sheltering inside. Amnesty International concluded that the attack was a war crime. Participants also visited the Savur-Mohyla memorial, a Soviet World War II monument that Russia rebuilt in 2022.
The trip itinerary included a welcome breakfast with the youth department head of the occupation authorities and sessions on creating social media posts. The guide urged participants to share "short videos, reels, stories, and photo carousel posts" using official hashtags. Eclat Allan, a participant from Tanzania, wrote under a photo of herself in front of armored vehicles, "Dear Russia… you’ve successfully, effortlessly stolen my heart." Jade McGlynn, a professor at King’s College London, told the Kyiv Independent that the point is distribution so the content looks like independent foreign journalism rather than Russian state media.
