© REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

The annual Eurovision Song Contest is chiefly known for its flamboyant costumes and glittering stage sets. But this month the show has been at the center of a very different kind of discussion—its role in the timing and implications of rocket attacks from Gaza.

Each year the contest, which has been musically pitting European countries against each other for over 60 years, is hosted by the winner of the previous year. And when Israeli Netta’s female empowerment pop hit “Toy” won for Israel last year in Portugal, the discussion immediately turned to the political implications.

Netta’s cry of “Next year in Jerusalem!” upon receiving the contest’s trophy didn’t help with the apprehension over the 2019 hosting. Her remark came just a few days before Donald Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—a move that was met with protests and violence. Though Netta may have merely been availing of the traditional phrase used at the end of Jewish Passover Seders, her smiling appearance shortly afterwards with controversial Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t help to depoliticize her win.

In the end, Israel’s public broadcaster was able to resist Netanyahu’s pressure to stage the contest in Jerusalem—by asking the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the show, to take the unprecedented move of deciding the location itself. Even with the contest being held in Tel Aviv, there were still calls to boycott this year’s contest as part of the BDS movement. BDS campaigners tried to put pressure on national broadcasters to not take part in this year’s contest. But though there were briefly rumors that Ireland’s broadcaster might give in to the pressure, in the end no country pulled out.

Madonna, who is slated to perform as the interval act while votes are being counted on Saturday night, was also subject to boycott pressure. But yesterday she confirmed in a statement that she will perform, saying, “I’ll never stop playing music to suit someone’s political agenda nor will I stop speaking out against violations of human rights wherever in the world they may be.”

Despite her insistence, the organizers say that she has not contacted them and has not signed any contract—leaving open the possibility that she may be a no-show on Saturday.

Gaza Attack

As preparations for the show steeped up a gear this month, violence broke out in Gaza. The worst nightmare of the organizers seemed to be coming true—the idea that the show could suddenly be interrupted by anti-rocket sirens.

As contestants arrived in Tel Aviv to start rehearsals two weeks ago, Hamas militants in Gaza launched a barrage of rockets into southern Israeli towns. Israel then retaliated by bombing sites in Gaza. The battle lasted three days, killing 23 people in Gaza and four in Israel.

It was among the worst flare-ups in violence in recent years. But unlike other recent incidents, it ended very suddenly with a ceasefire. The Israeli response was uncharacteristically restrained, and some attributed this to government fears of disrupting the contest. In turn, analysts suspect that the Hamas militants chose to launch their attack so close to the contest because they knew the Israeli response would be limited.

Michael Oren, Israel’s deputy prime minister, added to that impression when he tweeted that Hamas would be dealt with after Eurovision.

It’s a reflection of the significance of this annual event, which is now the most-watched live television event in the world other than the soccer World Cup final, which takes place every four years. Attracting around 200 million pairs of eyes, it has more viewers each year than the American Super Bowl, the Oscars, and the State of the Union speech combined.

Security Alert

On Monday, the US embassy in Israel issued a security alert for the contest, urging all Americans in Israel to exercise caution—noting that this year’s contest is coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the embassy’s move to Jerusalem.

“Terrorist groups may choose the anniversary, which coincides with the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv and Nakba Day, to conduct violent protests or an attack,” said the statement posted on the embassy’s website. Nakba Day is the commemoration by Palestinians of their displacement following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

This year’s contest has been accompanied by the biggest security operation in Eurovision history, with thousands of police deployed. Around 300,000 tourists are expected to come to Tel Aviv this week for the contest, though this number may be far lower than in previous years as prospective visitors have balked at the far-higher-than-normal ticket costs, something the Israelis say has been necessary to pay for all the security.

So far, Eurovision week has progressed without a hitch. Tuesday night’s semi-final, which saw ten countries qualify for Saturday’s final, went relatively smoothly. However, an Israeli webcast of the show was hacked with animated explosions superimposed on the host city.

Why Is Israel in the Eurovision?

Aside from all the geopolitics and controversy, many viewers may have a far more basic question. Given that it’s a country in the Middle East, why is Israel in Eurovision at all?

The reality is that this isn’t necessarily a “European” singing contest but actually a contest for members of the European Broadcasting Union—which is made up of state broadcasters from across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. But Israel is the only participant from outside of Europe because its Muslim neighbors in the other two groups have refused to share a stage with it. Morocco has only competed once—in 1980, a year Israel wasn’t participating. (Australia is the only non-EBU-member to participate in the contest, which it has done as a guest since 2015.)

This isn’t the first time Israel has hosted the contest. Netta’s win last year was the fourth time Israel has won the contest. It hosted in 1979 and 1999—both times in Jerusalem. In 1979 it even won while it was hosting, though it declined to host the following year’s contest in 1980, or participate at all, because of budgetary and security concerns.

Both of those previous times the contest passed without incident. Organizers are hoping that this year will be the same.

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© REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

On Saturday night, as viewers around the world tune in for the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest, the most interesting thing may be who isn’t there.

After a national scandal involving a famous Greek pop singer pretending to be Mexican, Greece has failed to qualify for the final. After fielding an entry likely intended as a political ploy in a dispute with Ukraine, Russia has been eliminated from the contest. And after refusing to air the Irish and Albanian entries during this week’s semi-final, China has been banned from airing the contest.

Every year dozens of European countries field a song for the competition, with the winner hosting the following year’s contest; Eurovision has been in equal measure delighting and irritating audiences for six decades. But over the past 18 years it has exploded in popularity, with viewers across the world making it the most-watched live television event in the world, surpassed only by the World Cup. Some 200 million people are expected to tune in this year.

Since the countries formerly behind the iron curtain joined the contest in the late 1990s, it has been split into three separate shows to accommodate the 43 contestants (and avoid a six-hour long program). Countries are eliminated during two rounds of semi-finals the week before the contest. The “big five”—France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the UK—do not have to face elimination in the semi-finals because they pay the most for the contest.

Eurovision has always been fairly political, but this week’s semi-finals developments shocked many viewers and participants.

Cyprus’ Secret Albanian Greek Pop Star

Going into Saturday’s final, Cyprus’ entry Fuego, sung by Eleni Fourera, has emerged as the favorite to win. The catchy pop tune and Beyoncé-style hair flipping in Tuesday’s semi-final thrust it ahead of Israel’s entry Toy, which has been plagued by staging problems.

Fourera is not Cypriot. In fact, she has no real connection to Cyprus. The country doesn’t have much in the way of a domestic pop music industry and imports music from Greece instead. As a consequence, Cyprus’ Eurovision entries are often Greek.

Fourera is one of Greece’s hottest pop stars of the moment, but she is not ethnically Greek. She was born in neighboring Albania as Entela Fureraj, and her parents moved to Greece when she was seven. But because of hostility toward Albanians in Greece, she claimed to be Mexican and changed her name to Fourera when she joined the Greek girl group Mystique in 2007.

In 2013 a Greek newspaper outed her as a secret Albanian, and eventually she acknowledged her heritage. With nationalist sentiments flaring in Greece, she did indeed face the backlash she feared. And this year, when she decided she wanted to participate in Eurovision, she was rebuffed. The Greek broadcaster wanted a Greek singer singing in Greek (a sharp departure from their previous entries, which have almost always been in English). So Eleni approached the Cypriot broadcaster to represent their entry, and Fuego was born.

There are in fact three ethnic Albanians competing in the final: Eleni, Albania’s Eugent Bushpepa, and Italy’s Ermal Meta (born in Albania but raised in Italy). During rehearsals last week, they took a photo together making the ‘Albanian eagle’ hand gesture. That caused outrage in Greece, where the gesture is widely interpreted as a nod to Greater Albania, a nationalist concept that involves annexing parts of Greece. Prominent Greeks called for Eleni to be rescinded as a contestant, apparently forgetting that Cyprus is in fact a separate country. The Cypriot broadcaster was forced to publicly announce that they still support Eleni as their entry.

Then came the result that stunned Greece: Their song, Oneiro Mou, did not receive enough votes in Tuesday’s semi-final to qualify for the show—unheard of for the Eurovision-obsessed country. After taking some days to absorb the shock, Greek fans in Lisbon are now fully embracing Eleni as their own.

Goodbye, Russia

The other semi-finals shock was Russia’s failure to qualify – something that has never happened before in the history of Eurovision.

Russia put forward Julia Samoylova, a wheelchair-bound singer with spinal muscular atrophy who represented the country last year. The move was widely interpreted as an intentional trap set for Ukraine, to force Kiev to kick Russia out of the contest. Russia had originally intended to refuse participating in protest of Ukraine’s winning song in 2016, a thinly-veiled critique of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Samoylova could not enter Ukraine because she had performed a concert in Crimea, entering via Russia.

Samoylova’s song this year, I Won’t Break, was seen by many as painting a picture of globalist forces conspiring to hurt Russia. But it was a poor performance with weak vocals, and it was eliminated in the semi-final on Thursday night. There is already speculation that Russia will use the failure to qualify as a pretext to permanently pull out of the contest, just as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did in 2012 after Turkey failed to qualify. For the moment, the Russians are claiming that Samoylova’s earpiece wasn’t working and that’s why she sang poorly.

With Russia having emerged as a pantomime vision for Eurovision fans, partly because of Eastern European political tensions and partly because of Russia’s anti-gay policies, the news of the country’s failure to qualify was greeted enthusiastically in the arena. But it will further feed Russia’s narrative of international persecution at home.

China Banned

The European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the yearly contest, has become obsessed with increasing the already enormous audience figures, engaging in a quest to spread viewership to new regions. As part of that strategy, it inked a deal with China’s broadcaster a few years ago.

But Eurovision has a strict rule that if you broadcast the contest, you must air every entry. The genesis of this rule comes from Israel’s participation in the competition. Arab countries such as Morocco have participated or expressed interest in participating in the past, but only if they can black out the Israeli entry during the broadcast. And so, they cannot participate.

In 2008, Azerbaijan blacked out the entry of its neighbor Armenia as the two countries are still at war. As a consequence, it was banned from participating in or airing the contest for one year.

On Tuesday night during China’s broadcast of the first semi-final, the screen went black during the Irish and Albanian entries. The former because it featured a gay couple, and the latter because the singer has tattoos.

Questions swirled over how the EBU would respond. China’s audience is huge, and there was speculation that Eurovision’s quest for ever larger ratings would make them bend the rules for China. But on Thursday night, shortly before Russia failed to qualify, the EBU announced it was banning China from airing the contest because of the omission. There has been no comment yet from Beijing.

As fans across the world brace for the final, it’s worth noting that this year’s contest is especially fraught with geopolitical tensions. No matter who wins, the result is guaranteed to be contentious.

The post Eurovision 2018: Who’s In and Who’s Out appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork: © Dominik Herrmann

When Salvador Sobral won the Eurovision Song Contest representing Portugal last year with the song Amar Pelos Dois, a lot of people were caught off guard.

For one thing, Sobral’s gentle jazz waltz about unrequited love was not your usual Eurovision fare. At the grand finale in Kiev, an uncharacteristic hush fell over the arena when the Portuguese singer took to the stage. It may be that the song’s uniqueness is the reason it won—it stood out in a year in which the bookies’ favorites gave forgettable performances.

But Sobral’s win was also surprising because it was sung in Portuguese. Since 1999 countries have been allowed to sing in any language they like, and only one non-English song had won since then—Serbia’s Molitva in 2007. Many thought it was now impossible for a non-English song to win. Sobral proved them wrong.

Portugal is hosting this year’s contest in Lisbon on May 12. As expected, Sobral’s shock win has prompted a record number of non-English songs to be fielded in this year’s contest―14 out of the 43 entries. This is the highest number of non-English songs in the contest since countries were no longer forced to sing in their official national language 20 years ago. This development has delighted France, where politicians and broadcast executives have railed against the predominance of English in the modern contest.

Only France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal can be counted on to sing in their native language regularly. Curiously, it is only small countries that have dared to join them, generally two or three every year. Russia has never sung in Russian, and Germany has never sung in German since they were allowed to start singing in English in 2007—a track record that has drawn heavy criticism from Paris.

For France, this is about far more than just music. That countries have been so quick to abandon their native tongues after the rules were loosened, in the interest of doing well in the contest, is seen by some to be American cultural imperialism infecting a European contest. And it’s a long-standing grudge. It was at France’s insistence that countries were forced for decades to sing in their native language―even if they didn’t want to.

A Swedish-French Linguistic War

When the Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956, organizers did not think to specify a policy on languages. It was just assumed that each country would sing in its own language. That changed in 1965, when Sweden showed up to the contest with an entry in English. France was not amused. It convinced the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union, which runs the contest, to impose a rule in 1966 requiring entries to be in an official language of the competing country.

Sweden, which wanted to continue singing in English, did not like the change. And so Stockholm immediately went to work trying to convince the other broadcasters in the EBU to scrap the rule. In 1973 it was successful, and the EBU decided to get rid of the native language requirement. One year later, Sweden fielded ABBA’s now-iconic song Waterloo, which won the contest. Whether it would have won if ABBA had sung it in Swedish, we can only conjecture.

In 1975 a song in English called Ding-a-Dong won for the Netherlands. In 1976, Brotherhood of Man’s song Save Your Kisses For Me won for the United Kingdom. By 1977, France was fed up. Three consecutive wins in English was more than some could take. After heavy pressure from Paris and others, the EBU re-introduced the language restriction in 1977. Directly after the rule change, France won with L’Oiseau et l’Enfant. The language restriction, which came to be derisively known as the “English ban,” would stay in place for more than two decades.

The rule stated that a country could sing only in an official national language, and that gave some countries more options than others. Switzerland could sing in German, French, Italian, or Romansh―though they usually chose French. Iceland could only sing in Icelandic. Spain, which had only recently thrown off the dictatorship that repressed all languages other than Castilian Spanish, was now forbidden from fielding a Eurovision entry in Catalan not by Madrid―but by the EBU. Only Malta, Ireland, and the UK were allowed to sing in English.

Tear Down This Linguistic Wall!

So what finally convinced France and the EBU to cave in? It was a string of almost uninterrupted wins ping-ponging between Ireland and the UK from 1992 to 1997. The only country to break the six-year English streak was Norway in 1995, with an instrumental song that had no lyrics.

The contest started to feel like an exclusively British Isles affair, and ratings were going down the toilet. Eurovision was feeling old and boring, completely out of touch with the modern pop music tastes of the day. The EBU realized it had to relax the rules if it wanted to revive the contest.

In 1999 France finally had to face its Waterloo. Countries were allowed to sing in whatever language they wanted. Not missing a beat, the first country to win after the rule change was Sweden with Take Me To Your Heaven, sung in English, which has become a Eurovision favorite.

It wasn’t just the language restriction that was ended that year. The EBU also got rid of the requirement for each song to have a live orchestra. This paved the way for modern-sounding pop songs. Ratings for the song contest shot up over the following decade, and it is now the most-watched live television event in the world―beaten only by the World Cup every four years.

But the boost in popularity wasn’t only because of the rule changes. It was also thanks to the new infusion of energy as Eastern European countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain eagerly joined. They brought with them a burst of enthusiasm that fundamentally changed the contest, throwing off its stuffy, old-fashioned image of the 1990s. Eurovision entries now sounded more like what is heard on European radio. And the reality is that songs on European radio are largely in English. Audiences wanted to vote for a song they could understand. By 2016, English accounted for 93 percent of Eurovision entries.

Linguistic Backlash

The ratings-watchers of national broadcasters may have liked the developments, but many linguistic purists have not. Many feel that Eurovision songs have become carbon copies of each other, without any cultural connection to the country that field them.

But does linguistic diversity automatically equal cultural diversity? The EBU has been keen to stress that this isn’t a folk music contest; it’s a pop song contest. And the reality is that even when Eurovision entries were sung in many different languages, they still sounded mostly the same.

Nevertheless, those who have bristled at the predominance of English in the modern contest will be pleased to see so many native-language entries this year. Aside from the usual culprits, the 14 countries that have chosen to take the plunge this year with non-English songs include Greece, Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Hungary. Estonia will be singing in Italian.

For a non-English win, the odds have never been greater since 1999. Yet with 31 wins―just under half of the total―English will still be hard to beat. France has 14 wins, but the last French winner was in 1988, and a song in French has never won in a contest where linguistic freedom was allowed. So don’t hold your breath―the bookies’ top three favorites to win―Israel, Czech Republic, and Bulgaria―are all in English.

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© REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

National tensions have long played a role in the Eurovision Song Contest. Although the official rules state there should be no “lyrics, speeches [or] gestures of a political or similar nature,” that hasn’t stopped allegiances and rivalries from affecting the outcome. Those who say it’s about the music are kidding themselves.

The politics were subtle until the 1990s. Which language was a country singing in? Was the color of an outfit meant to symbolize an independence movement? Why were Scandinavian countries always voting for each other? It was never too serious. But that all changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As the countries beyond the iron curtain joined Eurovision, the number of contestants tripled in size over the ensuing 15 years.

The new entrants brought with them an enthusiasm that breathed fresh life into a contest that had become staid and old-fashioned. But they also brought their many conflicts. Eurovision was established in 1956 to celebrate peace among Western European nations after a horrible war. Now there are countries competing while they are at war with each other.

The new era dawned in 1991. Yugoslavia, the only Communist country to participate in Eurovision during the Cold War, was represented by a woman named Baby Doll. They had just hosted the contest the previous year in Zagreb, having won in 1989. But as Baby Doll prepared to represent her country in Rome, she got the news that Yugoslavia was about to disappear. The contest had already been moved from the originally planned venue in San Remo, Italy, because of worries about its proximity to the Balkans, which were spiraling into war.

The new countries formed by the break-up entered the contest while peace settlements were still being finalized. And yet they continued voting for each other and still do so today. The former Yugoslav countries have become the most predictable voting bloc in the contest.

Moscow’s Trap for Kiev

Since then, tensions in Eastern Europe have become a regular feature of the contest, culminating in this year’s remarkable developments.

The stage was set last May, when Ukrainian contestant Jamala scored a shock win with a song about Crimea. Russia was furious. It wasn’t explicitly about Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of the Ukrainian territory. Instead, it was an emotionally intense song about the Soviet Union’s mass deportations of Crimean Tatars to Siberia in 1944.

The Kremlin did not see an innocent historical tale in the song. They saw a protest against the current Russian actions in Crimea, by a singer they say has close ties to Ukrainian nationalists. The Russian media and political elite were enraged. The winning country always hosts the contest the following year, and it was widely expected Russia would refuse to participate in this year’s contest in Kiev.

Russia kept the organizers guessing. For months they would not say whether they would participate. Finally on March 12, just one day before the deadline to submit an entry, Moscow suddenly announced they would submit the song ‘Flame is Burning,’ to be sung by Julia Samoilova. She is a former finalist on the Russian version of XFactor.

Had Russia relented? Had they decided to extend an olive branch, and stand by their insistence (made vociferously in objection to last year’s win) that the contest should remain free from politics? At first it looked that way. The song is completely innocuous. Samoilova is a sweet girl who has been in a wheelchair since childhood, suffering from spinal muscular atrophy.

But it soon emerged that all was not as it appeared. Samoilova had performed a concert in Crimea in 2015, a year after Russia’s annexation – which is still considered illegal by most of the world. Under Ukrainian law, anyone who has visited the territory under Russian occupation has violated Ukrainian law and is not allowed to enter the country.

Your Move, Ukraine

Moscow certainly knew they were putting Kiev in a difficult situation by selecting an artist who had performed in Crimea. Either Kiev would climb down from the ban, exempting Samoilova from the law during her visit for Eurovision, or they would ban a sweet girl in a wheelchair from participating in the contest. In the end Ukraine took the bait, announcing that she cannot enter. Russia pulled out of this year’s contest and there is speculation they may never return.

After a bearded drag queen from Austria won the contest in 2014, politicians in Moscow were enraged and called for Russia to quit. Plans were made to revive the old cold war alternative to Eurovision – Intervision – as a family-friendly alternative. The plans never got off the ground, but many Eurovision watchers think this year’s developments will give the Russian government the pretext to make Russia’s public broadcaster permanently pull out and start a new contest.

This is not the first time Eurovision has been hit by Russia-Ukraine tensions. In 2007, shortly after the ‘Orange Revolution’ protesting Russian influence in Ukraine, Kiev fielded a song called “Lasha Tumbai,” which means nothing in any language but many in Russia interpreted as being meant to sound like “Russia goodbye.” The EBU considered banning it from the contest, but in the end concluded there was no firm evidence that it was meant as a provocation. Russians would remember the perceived slight.

A History of Spats

Western European countries had their share of drama in the four decades before the Eastern expansion. There was the time in 1968 when Spanish dictator Francisco Franco allegedly bribed national juries to vote for Massiel’s ‘La la la’ over Cliff Richard’s ‘Congratulations.’ There was the Eurovision language battle in the 1970s, when countries led by Sweden tried to sing in English, prompting France to insist on a requirement that each country had to sing in its national language. That lasted until 1999, when a five-year string of wins by Ireland and the UK finally convinced France to end the ban on non-native languages. The UK never won the song contest again.

West Germany was never able to win the contest until 1982, and could only do so by singing a song about peace and love. Because of the presence of Israel in the contest, no Arab country has ever participated – except in 1980 when Morocco participated, taking advantage of Israel’s absence that year.

Still, this all seems like child’s play now. Since 1991 the contest has become so dominated by Eastern European allegiances and rivalries that it prompted Terry Wogan, the commentator for the British broadcast of the contest for four decades, to quit live on air in 2008.

Bloc voting – the phenomenon of countries with close geographic or cultural ties voting for each other regardless of musical merit – became more than just an amusing sideshow in the 2000s. The sheer number of new countries in the East meant that Western Europe was being crowded out. By 2008, when Russia won with a very mediocre song thanks to Slavic bloc voting, Wogan had seen enough. He declared that Eurovision was “no longer a musical contest” and had instead become an Eastern European game of favorites.

“At least the voting used to be on the songs,” he said. “Now it is really about national prejudice. As far as the Eastern bloc countries are concerned they are voting for each other.” He later followed through on his threat and quit his long-standing hosting gig, even though the rules were subsequently changed to lessen the impact of political voting by re-introducing national juries of music experts (the contest had for many years been determined entirely by public phone voting).

Eastern Conflict

The Eastern bloc voting may have been somewhat allayed by the rule change, but Eastern politics were not. In 2009 Moscow hosted the conference. It was a year after the Russia-Georgia war, and Georgia tried to sneak a political entry in with a song called “We Don’t Wanna Put In”. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the contest, balked. They said the phrase had no meaning in English and was clearly a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They banned it from the contest.

The Caucasus region has been a breeding ground for Eurovision conflict. During the 2009 contest Azerbaijan was accused of having obscured the phone number displayed to vote for its neighbor Armenia during the broadcast (the two countries are locked in a running conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory). Azerbaijan authorities then allegedly interrogated citizens who had voted for Armenia anyway. Azerbaijan denied conducting the interrogations but nonetheless, the EBU fined the country €2,700 euros.

Two years later, Azerbaijan won the contest. As its capital Baku was preparing to host in 2012, its neighbor Armenia had to withdraw because Armenians are not allowed to enter Azerbaijan. In what was perhaps an act of revenge, four years later the Armenian contestant waved a flag for the territory the two countries are fighting over during the broadcast – an act for which she was reprimanded.

Armenia infuriated its neighbor Turkey in 2015 by fielding a song called ‘Don’t Deny’ that slipped past the EBU censors despite being quite clearly about the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I. Turkey was not there to object, however, having permanently pulled out of the contest in 2013. This was ostensibly because of objections to the voting system, but was more likely due to the discomfort of Turkey’s increasingly Islamic government with participating in a contest alongside Israel.

Perhaps it was naive to think that a contest between nations could ever be truly free of politics. In many ways, Eurovision ended up being even more political than the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). But for many viewers, it is the politics that makes the contest so thrilling. And for them, the cup runneth over in 2017.

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© picture alliance/AP Photo/Ekaterina Lyzlova

Eurovision, the annual contest in which European nations compete against one another to produce the best song, has been no stranger to political controversies over its 60 years. But nothing compares to what is now unfolding in Kiev.

This year, the song contest has become entangled in today’s most controversial and beguiling geopolitical conflict – Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea.

The stage was set last May, when Ukrainian contestant Jamala scored a shock win in the 2016 contest with a song about Crimea. It wasn’t explicitly about the current conflict. Instead, it was an emotionally intense song about the Soviet Union’s mass deportations of Crimean Tatars to Siberia in 1944.

In that song, the Kremlin did not see an innocent historical tale. They saw a protest against the current Russian actions in Crimea, by a singer they say has close ties to Ukrainian nationalists. The Russian media and political elite were furious. The winning country always hosts the contest the following year, and it was widely expected Russia would refuse to participate in the contest in 2017.

As the time for this year’s contest drew closer, Russia kept everyone guessing. For months, they would not say whether they would participate. Finally, on March 12, just one day before the deadline to submit an entry, Moscow suddenly announced they would enter the song “Flame is Burning,” to be sung by Julia Samoilova. She is a former finalist on the Russian version of X Factor.

Had Russia relented? Had they decided to extend an olive branch, and stand by their insistence (made vociferously in objection to last year’s win) that the contest should remain free from politics?

At first it looked that way. The song is completely innocuous. Samoilova is a lovely woman, who has been in a wheelchair since childhood, suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. But it soon emerged that all was not as it appeared. Samoilova had performed a concert in Crimea in 2015, one year after Russia’s annexation, which is considered illegal by most of the world. Under Ukrainian legislation in place since 2014, anyone who has visited the territory under Russian occupation has violated Ukrainian law and is not allowed to enter the country.

Falling into the Kremlin’s Trap

Moscow certainly knew that by selecting an artist who had performed in Crimea, they were putting Kiev in a difficult situation. Either they would climb down from the ban, exempting Samoilova from the law during her visit for the Eurovision contest, or they would ban a sweet girl in a wheelchair from participating.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian security services confirmed that they have chosen the latter. Samoilova will be prevented from entering Ukraine if she tries to travel to Kiev to compete in the song contest.

And with that, Ukraine fell right into Russia’s trap.

The indignant reaction from Moscow was as swift as it was predictable. The Russian deputy foreign minister called Ukraine’s decision “outrageous, cynical, and inhumane.” Several Russian MPs are calling for the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the contest, to move it to a different country. One MP has said that if Russia can’t participate this year, then it should never participate again.

The EBU is now in a difficult situation. The contest is two months away and it would be almost impossible to move it to another location. If they lean too heavily on Ukraine to not implement its own law, it will look like they are giving in to Russian pressure.

But that pressure is intense. The folks at EBU headquarters in Geneva are terrified of Russia pulling out of Eurovision, given that the song contest has some of the highest ratings in that country.

The Wurst Factor

This is not the first time that Russia has threatened to walk away from Eurovision. After the bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst won the contest in 2014 for Austria, Russian politicians demanded that the country pull out because Eurovision had become “a celebration of perversion.”

In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to revive the old Cold War alternative to Eurovision, Intervision. Plans were announced just two weeks after Conchita’s victory in 2014, but they never got off the ground.

The contest was going to include any Eastern European states that wanted to join, as well as Central and East Asian states. The EBU is very worried about Russia breaking away and establishing its own rival contest, particularly after Turkey’s then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pulled his country out in 2012 to launch his own Turkvision contest with other Turkic-speaking nations.

Eurovision has seen its ratings explode over the past two decades as the contest has gained a huge new audience in Eastern Europe. It’s now the most widely watched live entertainment event in the world each year, with new audiences developing globally. It is big business, and a Russian withdrawal could jeopardize that.

And so, the EBU tried to walk a fine line saying that while they are “deeply disappointed” in the Ukrainian decision, “we have to respect the local laws of the host country.” They also said they would enter into talks with Ukraine, “with the aim of ensuring that all artists can perform.”

But the EBU has lost this battle before – there is precedent in Azerbaijan. That country won the song contest in 2011, creating an awkward situation because it is still in a (cold) war with its neighbor Armenia, another participant in the contest. Armenians are banned from entering Azerbaijan, leaving it an open question of how Armenia would compete in the contest in Baku. The EBU entered talks with Azerbaijan about making a two-day exemption for the law for Eurovision, but Baku wouldn’t budge. In the end, Armenia decided to pull out.

Given its track record, it seems uncertain that the EBU will be able to convince Ukraine to bend its law. Then again, the aggrieved country is in a very different league this time around. The EBU could afford to anger Armenia in 2012. Can it afford to anger Russia?

Either way, Moscow will win this battle. If Kiev is forced to back down and allow Samoilova into the country, it will be a humiliating blow to the Ukrainian cause. If Russia pulls out of the contest this year because Ukraine banned their singer, it will be Ukraine that looks petty and irrational – and Russia who looks misunderstood and persecuted. More importantly, it may give Putin the excuse he needs to permanently pull out of the contest despite its huge popularity in Russia and revive Intervision.

Once again, Russia’s president has outmaneuvered his opponents. And he did it by manipulating them into harming themselves. All for the sake of a song contest.

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