On 12 February Ukraine hosted its national selection for Eurovision-2022. The rap-band Kalush Orchestra won the audience vote with their song «Stefania», a rap-lullaby intertwined with the Carpathian folk motifs, but the judges chose a different favorite.
Alina Pash with the song «Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors» («Tini zabutykh predkiv») became the winner of the competition after summing up all the votes. Her song with similar motifs from Ukrainian history and Carpathian mythology has the same name as cult novella by a prominent Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi, based on which famed Georgian-Armenian director Serhii Parajanov shot a film in 1965, highly praised by the critics and receiving numerous awards at that time.
After the announcement of the results, a scandal broke out on social networks, and the Kalush Orchestra declared the results to be falsified. During a live stream on Instagram, the band demanded that representatives of Suspilne media – audit firm PwC, which was counting the votes, send them a document with the results of the audience vote, but this claim was denied.
«We will conduct another inspection to understand how the calculation took place. All calculation results will be published – you will see specific results. I guarantee that there were no falsifications there,» – said Yaroslav Lodyhin, a member of the national selection jury and a member of the board of National «Suspilne» Television of Ukraine (NSTU).
Counted manually
During the announcement of the results, the leader of the national selection made several mistakes with the numbers, in particular, he changed the performers with the lowest number of points three or four times.
In addition, after the first mistake of the presenter, the electronic scoreboard stopped working, and its operation was not resumed until the end of the announcement of results. At that time, Yaroslav Lodyhin, one of the judges, began to count the participants’ scores on a sheet of paper.
It should be noted that among the judges of the national selection were singers Tina Karol, Jamala, as well as the mentioned member of the NSTU Board Yaroslav Lodyhin.
How social networks reacted
Immediately after the announcement of the national selection results, comments started appearing on the Eurovision Instagram page about the falsification of the results and the fact that Alina Pash cannot represent Ukraine. More than three thousand comments appeared stating the words «Shame» and «Show real results».
In addition, Facebook users also began to resent. In particular, they note that Alina Pash was admitted to the contest in violation of the rules because of her performances in the occupied Crimea and a tour in Russia.
Marta Filonova, who works at the Ukrainian Center in Italy, wrote that the winner in the final was rapper Alina Pash, who «breathes unevenly» to Russia. The Kalush Orchestra won the audience vote, but the judges voted for Alina Pash.
«Below there is a photo where Alina is walking on Red Square in Moscow in 2017, and under it, there is a photo where she is wearing a jacket in the colours of the Russian tricolour,» – Marta Filonova said.
12 February, Alina Pash commented to Kateryna Osadcha that it was such a prank.
«People didn’t understand the prank... I wanted to show the middle finger to this whole system, to show how Kyiv is spelled correctly, not Kiev, and if people didn’t get it, I’m sorry, I won’t repeat it. I will not do pranks anymore. I’m not that rebellious now. I am growing, developing, growing up, and this is normal,» – she said.
«You can go to Moscow for private purposes. You can perform in the occupied Crimea, violating the law, which calls it a crime to enter the Autonomous Republic of Crimea from Russian territory. And after that, it is easy to stand under the flag, for which the Russians can kill,» – journalist and historian Vakhtang Kipiani wrote.
Can Alina Pash represent Ukraine?
After the disqualification of the singer Maruv, who was banned from performing at Eurovision last year because of performing in Russia, the «Suspilne» Broadcaster clearly stated in the rules that «musicians who performed in Russia and the occupied territories after 2014, or went to the Crimea or the occupied territories in violation of the law, are not allowed to participate in the national selection for Eurovision.»
Alina Pash, who won the Eurovision national final 12 February and will represent Ukraine in Turin this year, has been included in the «Peacemaker« database (Center for Research of Signs of Crimes against the National Security of Ukraine, Peace, Humanity, and the International Law). The musician was introduced in 2019 for knowingly illegally crossing the Ukrainian border in order to enter the occupied Crimea. Alina Pash was also in Crimea in August 2015 and flew there via Moscow.
«We went there with musicians for a wedding to a Ukrainian girl. Due to the way we fly there, unfortunately, I could not correct this moment and was powerless in this case. Being not such a media person at the time, I could not think of such consequences that could come out later,» – Alina Pash said in a comment on 1+1 TV channel in 2019.
12 February 2022, Alina Pash stated that the misconception of her flight to Crimea from Moscow was widely shared because she geotagged Yalta on Facebook when writing an angry post about Russian airlines.
In 2017, the singer visited Moscow, which became known from her post on Instagram, and in 2018, Alina Pash was invited to perform at the Russian festival «Bosco Fresh Fest«, organized by «Bosco di Ciliegi». The same company belongs to Vladimir Putin’s proxy in the 2018 presidential election, Mikhail Kusnirovich. Ukrainian bands Yuko and Happy People planned to perform there together with Alina. After that, concerts were planned in Moscow at the festival «Wild Mint» and Bosco fresh fest-2018 in Skolkovo, Russia, but they were cancelled.
It will be recalled that Alina Pash also got into a scandal in 2020 when she released a video in which she told about the creation of a cover for a song by Russian musician Bohdan Titomir «Do as I do». The video caused a wave of criticism online. Then, in the video, she told the audience in Russian that she «loves covers. I practiced it with whole bands, and it was very cool.»
On the national selection page on Instagram, «Public Broadcaster» commented on allegations of non-compliance of Alina Pash with the requirements of the National Selection for Eurovision-2022 that «there is no evidence of the violation of selection rules by the finalist of the National Selection for Eurovision-2022 Alina Pash.»
«The video interview of Alina Pash, which is currently on the Internet as evidence of violation of the requirements of the National Selection, does not contain any facts that confirm the finalist’s violation of the rules of crossing the border of Ukraine. Participant Alina Pash provided guarantees that she did not violate the legislation of Ukraine and the requirements of the competition: the performance in 2015 took place at a private event of Ukrainians in Crimea, and the border was crossed from Ukraine,» – the statement said.
What solutions to the scandal were offered
Serhii Kostynsky, a former member of the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio, writes that in the selection for Eurovision-2022, it’s quite possible that there was an agreement between the Office of the President and the management of Public Broadcasting.
«The artist who was «needed» to the government, won [the competition], who, according to the rules of the competition developed by Suspilne, by the way, had no right to participate in the National Selection at all.»
He offers a solution to the situation as follows:
- Dismissal of Yaroslav Lodyhin from the position of a member of the NSTU Board due to manipulations that took place during the National Selection, or at least his temporary suspension from office for the period of the official inspection;
- Disqualification of Alina Pash for violating the terms of the competition (visiting the Crimea in violation of national law);
- Determining the further fate of the Selection.
We will add that on the Eurovision in May last year, Ukrainian band Go-A took fifth place, but became a favorite among the listeners globally. In particular, their song «SHUM» appeared in the top-ten charts in Apple Music and got the first position in the Spotify Viral-50. Listen to their performance on Youtube:
Alina Pash was selected despite the presenter’s confusion with the scores, technical problems with the electronic scoreboard, in the result of which one of the judges counted his marks on the ballot. Consequently, Kalush Orchestra took second place, and the singer Wellboy was third.
Sofia Shavranska
Translated by Vitalii Holich
You can read a Ukrainian language version of this story here.
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