The Eurovision Song Contest is taking place this week in Turin, Italy. After the semi-finals on Tuesday and Thursday, it will be decided on Saturday which song will be the best. Bookmakers expect a dominant Ukrainian victory. However, according to analysts, this may be largely due to political reasons. Russia was excluded from the competition. In recent years, more and more people have been asking the question about the festival: is it really about the songs, or is it a stage for current western trends?
Ukraine is represented this year by the band Kalush Orchestra with the song Stefania. In his style, he mixes hip-hop with traditional Ukrainian folk music. In its content, it is about a mother and the homeland. The frontman addressed it to his own mother, according to him, a significant part of the text was written before the war. His most quoted line ("I will always find home, even if all the roads are in ruins") is very popular in Ukraine. Some see it as the country's new national anthem.
According to the data published on the eurovisionworld.com website on the afternoon of May 10, the Ukrainian song is a sure winner of the competition. They give it a 49 percent chance of winning, which is well ahead of the second-placed Italian song, which got 13 percent. The offices are counting on multipliers between 1.47 and 1.68 percent for the Ukrainian competitor, so they will pay roughly half for one euro if the Kalush Orchestra wins the festival.
Experts fear that politics may interfere with the announcement of the final winner. Slobodan Todorović, editor-in-chief of the Serbian site Evrovizija.rs, believes that every performance should be judged on its merits.
"A possible win by Ukraine for political reasons would cast a bad light on Eurovision and the values it stands for - neutrality, political independence and the celebration of diversity," Todorović told AFP, as reported by N1 news portal.
"The fact that they can go on stage, leave the country, and receive messages from their supporters is already a success for them." - said Din Vuletić, Croatian historian and Eurovision geopolitical expert. According to him, the support that the Ukrainian team receives is tangible, but their victory is still not certain. He reminded that Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Croatia, failed in the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest, despite the fact that the countries were at war. Even then, Europe stood by them, but despite the support, they did not achieve outstanding results. "The Ukrainian song is of high quality, but there are other excellent contestants!" Vuletić added.
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It can be suspected that the bookmakers will not disappoint, that is, it is worth betting on the finish. It would be a miracle if the predictions did not come true, because then we can prepare for Ukraine's leading actor to address the people of Europe, defend the result, demand a recount of the votes, because if not....
