Russia, expelled from Eurovision, will begin its own international song contest final on Saturday at the request of President Vladimir Putin, with an act aimed at promoting Soviet-era names and “traditional family values.”
The Intergision singer is welcomed by 23 countries, which account for more than half of the world’s population, including China, India and Brazil, and competes for a prize money of 30 million rubles ($360,000).
Russia has been removed from the Eurovision Song Contest since Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops from Ukraine in 2022. This year, Putin announced a Kremlin aide named that the top Kremlin aide of the Supervisory Board will lead the Supervisory Board. Kiev calls the event “a tool of hostile propaganda.”
The show will be broadcast live on Russian television. Russian organizers say it is also available on the internet or television in other countries with a population of over 4 billion, but they have not released a list of foreign broadcasters they plan to carry it.
The song can be run in any language. Professional ju-search members of representatives from each country decide the outcome, not the viewer.
Interision revives the name of a music contest that Moscow performed in Eastern European satellite countries during the Soviet era. The new version features acts from now Russian countries, including Belarus, Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
Serbia is the only country that participates in both the Eurovision and the Middle. After US-born R&B singer Brandon Howard drops out at the last minute, citing family reasons, the US is represented by an Australian-born artist called “Vassy.”
In contrast to the famous kitsch of Eurovision, the Russian organizers of Intervision say they advocate “traditional, universal, family values.”
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a previous press conference that Moscow had not banned Russians from seeing the Eurovision, but he felt that some of them were called “alternative approaches to maintaining traditions and national culture, as well as religious, spiritual and moral components inherited from their ancestors.”
“If this is enjoying great demand, it only makes (we) happy. But we don’t dispute the right of ju-jury or Eurovision viewers to vote for a dressed, bearded man,” he said.
In Russia, strict rules prohibit actions that are deemed to promote homosexuality, and the “International LGBT Public Movement” is branded as an extremist organization.
Russia has participated in Eurovision 23 times since 1994, and in 2008 he won the song “Believe.”
Moscow is represented by the “shaman” in intermission. His real name is Yaroslavdronov and there is a Russian song called “Straight to the Heart.”
Once a nuclear bomb exploded on stage, Doronov has ridden the wave of patriotism that fueled war with songs such as “I am rossian” to become a staple on Russian state television.
