Half a dozen politicians from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's Morena party have created a congressional Mexico-Russia Friendship Committee, almost a month after Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
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The move is the latest in a string of events that suggest there is some sympathy for Russia in Mexico's ruling party, despite the invasion.
About two dozen congress members from Morena and the allied Labor Party applauded Russian Ambassador Viktor Koronelli on Wednesday after he addressed the committee, which met at Congress.
"For us this is a sign of support, of friendship, of solidarity in these complicated times in which my country is not just facing a special military operation in Ukraine, but a tremendous media war," Koronelli said.
"Russia didn't start this war, it is finishing it."
Russia has outlawed calling the invasion a war, and instead calls it "a special military operation".
"We are always ready to do everything we can to increase the friendship, relations and co-operation between Mexico and Russia in every aspect of the world and life," Morena Congressman Armando Contreras Castillo said.
Mexico has refused to send any aid to Ukraine or impose sanctions on Russia, but did vote in favour of a UN resolution condemning the invasion.
But on Wednesday, Lopez Obrador declared Mexico was neutral in the conflict.
"As regards the war, we are not going to participate in favour or against," the president said. "Our posture is neutrality."
Mexico's position on the conflict has been contradictory.
In the United Nations, the South American country proposed alongside France a humanitarian resolution blaming the Russian invasion for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
They then moved it out of the Security Council, where it faced a Russian veto, and instead took it to the 193-member General Assembly, where there are no vetoes.
Russia's UN Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the assembly that by considering the Ukraine-backed French-Mexican resolution, it was engaging in "another political anti-Russian show, set this time in an allegedly humanitarian context".
Domestically, the president's party appears to have a more pro-Russian stance.
In early March, a youth group apparently affiliated with Morena made headlines in Mexico after it sent an open letter to the Russian ambassador supporting the invasion.
"We reaffirm our moral and political support for the difficult decision that forced the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin to engage in the legitimate defence of his people and, seeking to avoid a larger military conflict and preserve world peace, militarily intervene in Ukrainian territory to weaken the neo-Nazi, coup-lead forces," the Morena Youth of Mexico State group wrote in the letter.
Lopez Obrador's spokesman, Jesus Ramirez, said the youth group had no official standing in the party.
Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said the position of Lopez Obrador and Morena harks back to 1960s-era leftism, when the Soviet Union was seen as a counterbalance to US dominance in Latin America.
They also reflect Mexico's long-standing resentment of US invasions which eventually cost the country half its territory.
"He doesn't want to be accused of being knuckled under by the US for the US foreign policy goals," Estevez said of the president.
Australian Associated Press
