Ukraine's unabashedly anti-Russian Eurovision song

As tensions between Russia and the West continue, Ukraine fields an entry about the Soviet Union's horrific mass deportations in Crimea. How did it get past the censors?

In 2009, as the war between Georgia and Russia raged on, Georgian public broadcaster GPB tried to pull a fast one on the Eurovision censors.

They fielded a song called "We Don't Wanna Put In", a disco anthem ostensibly about not wanting to stop dancing. The Eurovision organisers weren't having it. Songs with political themes are not allowed in the contest.

The title of the song, and it's main chorus, did not grammatically make sense in English. Though this could be said about a lot of Eurovision entries, this one was clearly meant to be "We don't want a Putin". 

Welcome to the New World of Eurovision

After a dramatic year of threatened boycotts, banned songs and host storm-offs, Eurovision 2009 in Moscow is at long last upon us. With a new voting format and a politically sensitive location, this Saturday’s finals could prove to be one of the more interesting in a long while.

Last year’s finals in Belgrade were the last straw for many who had grown frustrated with tribal voting patterns that seemed to have completely shut out Western Europe from ever possibly winning the phone-in public voting final round. The Slavic countries of Eastern Europe have tended to vote for each other since they entered the song contest after the end of the Cold War, and for some this pattern explained why Russia’s sub-par entry-on-ice from Dima Bilan handily won last year (though admittedly none of the 2008 entries were very good). Long-time British Eurovision host Terry Wogan – a veritable institution for Eurovision in the UK - was so exasperated last year with the voting pattern that he quit his hosting job live on air!

The system’s critics alleged that the voting had turned completely political rather than recognizing “talent” (talent being a subjective word when it comes to Eurovision!). Its defenders argued that if Western Europe wanted to be competitive in the song contest again, it needed to field real entries rather than joke acts that seemed to deliberately mock the contest, such as Ireland’s singing puppet last year and Britain’s Scooch in 2007.

Fearing an eventual withdrawal of the founding Western European countries from the contest (which France, Germany, Spain and the UK do pay for after all), Eurovision has changed the voting format this year to be 50% from a public vote and 50% from a panel of music industry experts in each country. So, for instance, the winner of the UK’s vote package will be decided by a combination of the results of the public phone-in vote and the decision of a British music industry panel who are charged with disregarding the nationality of the acts and looking only at talent. We won’t know until Saturday whether these panels will also fall into patterns of national prejudice, but people seem to be confident that they won’t. This year the odds-makers have picked Norway as the favourite to win, with Alexander Rybak’s folksy song “Fairy tale”.

“We Don’t Want a Putin”

Of course last year’s voting patterns aren’t the only controversial aspect of this year’s contest in Moscow. Ongoing tensions between Russia and the west have made this year’s location uncomfortable to say the least. After Russia’s invasion of Georgian-occupied territory in August, several estates including Latvia, Estonia and Poland announced they would boycott the Moscow Eurovision. Since then they seem to have softened their stance, as they are all now taking part. Georgia was also supposed to take part, but their entry was deemed too political and was banned by the European Broadcasting Union, which runs the show. The song that won the Georgian finals, “We Don’t Wanna Put In” by Stephane & 3G, seemed to deliberately parody a popular pop song in Russia by The Putin Girls called “We Want a Man Like Putin” (no joke, watch it it’s hilarious). The Georgia song also contained the thinly veiled lyrics “We don’t wanna put in, the negative move, it's killing the groove” in the chorus. The ban on the song is the first time the EBU has ever blocked an entry to the song contest for political reasons. But it was clear the organisation was worried about offending this year’s host, especially when Putin himself may be in the audience.

Of course the publicity the song has received from the controversy is probably more valuable than actually appearing on Eurovision. The song is bizarrely number two in the UK's Music Week pop chart at the moment. It’s also getting radio play across Europe.

The Songs

It looks like Russia’s Channel One is pulling out all the stops for the Moscow show, which kicked off last night at Moscow's Manezh Exhibition Centre. Reportedly it’s going to be the most expensive show in Eurovision’s history, though the actual budget won’t be revealed until after. Comparisons are obviously being made to the over-the-top Beijing Olympics in China, another international showcase event by an emerging BRIC power.

As previously mentioned, the hands-down favourite this year with the bookies is Norway, but Greece, Turkey and Ukraine are considered to have a good shot as well. Much of the talent this year is made up of female ballad singers, and there is (sadly) little of the tongue-in-cheek camp of the past two contests. The UK’s entry, “My Time” is a light theatrical ballad penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and sung by previously unknown Jade Ewan (though UK entrants are almost always previously unknown, and almost always still unknown afterwards!).

However on the continent they often field entrants who are already famous singers. France’s entry Patricia Kaas is a well-known Gallic chanteuse who has sold millions of records. Malta’s entry Chiara is a sensation in her home country and this will be her third try for the Eurovision crown (she narrowly lost to Israeli transsexual Dana International in 1998).

Beyond the ballad belters there are also a number of orchestral folksy entries. Front-runner Norway will have a set or violins, Estonia is featuring a six-piece female string group, and Slovenia even has a string quarter with barely any vocals. Sweden and Bulgaria are both featuring operatic singers.

After receiving much criticism for its puppet entry last year (it didn’t help that Dustin the Turkey puppet was featured as a mascot for the ‘no’ vote in the Irish referendum on the EU Reform Treaty),

Ireland has gone with a more serious entry this year with a girl rock band – who I saw perform at a Eurovision preview party in London a few weeks back and loved. Perhaps this year’s entrant is reflective of Ireland’s newly humble attitude toward Europe?

Sadly there’s only a few high camp entries in this year’s lineup. Turkey's entry “Dum Tek Tek” has been the most commercially popular, as it’s scantily-clad dancers were deemed “too sexy for TV” by Turkey’s authorities. Spain’s Soraya and Ukraine’s Svetlana Loboda will both feature scantily clad go-go boys (Ukraine’s was also at the preview – it was a little raunchy!). Strangely it is last year’s host Serbia that is providing the only comic entry, with an accordion-backed funny tale about materialism called Cipela.

The semi finals will be held tonight and Thursday, and the final will be held Saturday night, all at 8pm CET. The show airs in most every country in Europe on the national broadcaster, but sadly not in North America. But never fear, you can watch the show live on the Eurovision 2009 web page!

US gets its missiles in Poland

It’s official, the United States will install missiles in Poland pointed at Russia. The historic and highly controversial deal was signed in Warsaw this afternoon by Condoleezza Rice, ushering in a new era in Russo-Western relations.

The decision by Poland to allow the US to build its missile base there, and a mirror decision by the Czech Republic to build a twin radar facility in that country, seemingly couldn’t come at a worse time for relations between Russia and the West. Set as it is with the backdrop of the Georgia conflict, the timing is likely to enrage Russia even further.

The US insists the missiles are not directed at Russia but are rather for Europe’s protection from rogue states such as Iran. But there is no denying that the missiles are within easy striking distance of Russia, right at its doorstep. As part of the deal, the Americans will get a permanent garrison of US troops along with an agreement that the US will give Poland complete protection in the event of any conflict. All of this is outside the framework of NATO. Russia is obviously far from pleased that this is happening in its former satellite state. After all, they point out, the US didn't tolerate Russia putting missiles in Cuba. Why should the Russians tolerate this?

Ring Around the Russia

Things seem to be getting worse before they get better in Georgia. At the moment, according to Georgia, there is a 100-vehicle tank convoy heading again toward the capital, and Russia now controls 1/3 of the country. The Sarkozy-brokered EU cease fire agreement doesn't appear to be working.

As the world tries to figure out what to do about this mess, I was struck by something in John McCain's editorial, entitled, We Are all Georgians, in the Wall Street Journal today. McCain's editorial was strongly worded and stark, and there's speculation tonight that President Bush's decision to send Secretary of State Condoleeza Rise to Tblisi was driven by not being a desire to not be overshadowed by McCain. Meanwhile Obama seems to be nowhere to be found.

McCain's editorial is almost like a little trip down memory lane, presenting a renewed us-versus-them approach when it comes to Russia. But most interestingly, it seems to display a complete misunderstanding of current geopolitics. Either that or he's being deliberately disingenuous.

Russia attacks

It’s certainly been a tense couple days, with the west watching in disbelief as Russia launches what seems to be a full-scale invasion of its Southern neighbor Georgia. Considering this is a country that, theoretically, almost joined NATO at the Bucharest summit a few months ago, this is quite a provocation to the West. Nothing seems clear right now about what Russia’s intentions are or even what they’re doing, but one thing is certain: relations between the West and Russia have been fundamentally altered by the last few days events.

According to witness reports, Russian tanks are now making their way to the Georgian capital of Tblisi, and nobody seems to know what they’re going to do once they get there. The Russian military is denying the claims. At the same time, there have been reports that Russian planes are bombing Georgian ships in the Black Sea.

This is a key test for how Europe and the United States are going to respond, and it will be interesting to see whether they take different paths. French president Sarkozy seems to be trying to take a leading role in dealing with the conflict, even suggesting that there should be an EU peacekeeping force put into Georgia. US president Bush’s reaction has been muddled and strangle by the inability of the US to really do anything about it.