Voting in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on May 14 in Turin may look different for one specific reason – neither Russia or Belarus are taking part.
Ukraine’s folk-rap band Kalush Orchestra has qualified for the final. But the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises Eurovision, ruled that no Russian act would be able to participate this year, after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2021 the EBU rejected Belarus’s entry, which mocked protesters against the Lukashenko regime, and has since suspended Belarus’s broadcaster BTRC from the EBU.
Under Putin, Russian state broadcasting has heavily invested in its Eurovision entries with the goal of winning and hosting the contest, what could be called “stagecraft in the service of statecraft”.
