Eurovision 2017: From Kyiv to Berlin… wait what?

by Michalis Vranis 10,767 views

From Kyiv to Berlin all the way from Paris to Tallinn! This rephrasing of the 2007 Eurovision entry for the United Kingdom, suits well to the news which broke earlier Wednesday, seeing the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest being moved to Berlin.

Ingrid Deltenre falls victim of famous Russian pranksters

The Russian duo Alexei Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov set a phone prank to EBU’s general director and some interesting news came out of it. The prankster fooled the GD pretending to be Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. Throughout the phone conversation, Deltenre revealed that last year’s participating song 1944 from Jamala was not to be allowed to participate, but it came too late to her attention that it was a song with political messages.

In the scenario that Ukraine insists of not allowing Russia to participate in the contest because of the travel ban issued to their participant, Deltenre revealed that the competition would be moved to Berlin. This could even happen the last moment leaving Ukraine in the lurch.

How this story unfolds

The mediatic conflict between EBU, Ukraine and Russia is still on, with the three sides bringing worldwide attention to Eurovision for all the wrong reasons.

It was few weeks ago that the Ukrainian security services issued a travel ban to the Russian representative, Julia Samoilova, due to her 2015 appearance in Crimea, an action considered illegal in Ukraine since Samoilova did not enter Crimea through the Ukrainian ground.

This brought the reaction of the EBU which was desperately trying to find a solution to have the Russian representative on Eurovision stage. The idea of having Samoilova performing via satellite stream was not accepted by the Ukrainian side, which lead EBU to take stronger actions.

EBU’s general director Ingrid Deltenre, on a disclosed letter to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, stated that not allowing Samoilova to participate in the contest would certainly backfire against Ukraine as many countries were about to withdraw in that scenario as well as sanctions were to be applied to Ukrainian broadcaster.

ESCToday contacted EBU for a statement regarding this serious matter

Source: lenta.ru, Pravda.ru