Ukraine on Wednesday said it would not take part in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest after the singer selected to represent the nation dropped out following a row over Russia.
Singer MARUV won a public vote, but said she would not participate because the Ukrainian national broadcaster had imposed conditions, including a ban on concerts in Russia.
Other performers who had competed to represent Kiev in the annual competition, to be hosted this year in Tel Aviv, Israel, also refused to accept the conditions.
“National Public Broadcasting Co of Ukraine [UA PBC] is declining to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019,” the broadcaster said in a statement on Wednesday.
The broadcaster said the national selection process had revealed a “systemic problem” in Ukrainian music, that artists have business links to an “aggressor state.”
Russia and Ukraine are culturally close, but political ties between the nations have been in dire straits since Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
A conflict between Ukrainian troops and breakaway Moscow-backed rebels in the east of Ukraine has claimed about 13,000 lives since it broke out following the annexation.
National broadcaster UA PBC earlier accused MARUV, whose real name is Anna Korsun, of failing to understand her role as an ambassador who should represent Ukrainian public opinion.
“I’m a musician, not a tool in the political arena,” Korsun wrote on Instagram.
UA PBC made public some of the terms of the contract it requires the nation’s performer to sign, including a ban on “statements that may call into question the issue of territorial integrity and security of Ukraine.”
It also stipulated that the artist must not tour in Russia for three months after the contest.
“This is a crisis, to which there is no definite or correct answer, because society is divided,” Oleksandra Koltsova, a member of the board that oversees the Eurovision entry, told the Hromadske TV station.
Neither Freedom Jazz, the vocal trio who finished second in the national contest, nor KAZKA and Brunettes Shoot Blondes — the bands that came third and fourth — plan to go to Tel Aviv.
“We do not need a victory at any cost, our mission is to unite people with our music, not to sow discord,” KAZKA wrote on its Facebook page after talks with the national broadcaster.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS