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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Barred from Eurovision, Russia hosts rival ‘Intervision’ song
contest
Story by Reuters
Updated:
9:17 AM EDT, Sat September 20, 2025
Source: CNN
, Russia will launch the final of its own international song contest at
President Vladimir Putin’s behest on Saturday, with a Soviet-era name
and acts intended to promote “traditional family values.”
Singers at “Intervision” will hail from 23 countries accounting for
more than half the world’s population, including China, India and
Brazil, and compete for a cash prize of 30 million roubles ($360,000).
Russia has been excluded from the Eurovision song contest since Putin
tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022. This year, Putin
announced his rival contest, with a top Kremlin aide named to head the
supervisory board. Kyiv has called the event “an instrument of
hostile propaganda.”
The show will be broadcast live on Russian television. The Russian
organizers say it will also be available either over the internet or on
TV in other countries with a combined population of more than 4 billion
people, although they have not released a list of foreign broadcasters
that plan to carry it.
Songs can be performed in any language. A professional jury of
representatives from each country will decide the outcome, rather than
the viewing public.
Intervision revives the name of a music contest that Moscow used to
stage in the Soviet era with its Eastern European satellite states. The
new version will feature acts from countries Russia now considers
friendly, including Belarus, Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa,
the UAE and Venezuela.
Serbia is the only country to take part in both Eurovision and
Intervision. The United States will also be represented, by an
Australian-born artist called “Vassy,” after U.S.-born R&B singer
Brandon Howard dropped out at the last minute citing family reasons.
In contrast to Eurovision’s famed kitsch, Intervision’s Russian
organizers say they propound “traditional, universal and family
values.”
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a pre-contest news conference that
Moscow had not banned Russians from watching Eurovision, but felt there
was room too for what he called “alternative approaches to preserving
traditions and national cultures, as well as religious, spiritual and
moral constructs that we have inherited from our ancestors.”
“If this enjoys great demand, that only makes (us) happy. But we do
not dispute the right of the jury or Eurovision viewers to vote for a
bearded man in a dress,” he said, an apparent reference to
Eurovision’s 2014 winner, Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst.
In Russia, stringent rules ban any actions deemed to promote
homosexuality, and “the international LGBT public movement” is
branded an extremist organization.
Russia took part in Eurovision 23 times from 1994 and won it in 2008
with the song “Believe” by Dima Bilan.
Moscow will be represented at Intervision by “Shaman,” whose real
name is Yaroslav Dronov, with a Russian-language song called
“Straight to the Heart.”
Dronov, who once simulated detonating a nuclear bomb on stage, has
ridden a wave of war-fueled patriotism with songs such as “I am
Russian” to become a staple on Russian state TV.
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