Government censorship means no Ukraine at Eurovision 2019

This 23 February 2019 music video from Ukraine shows the song ‘Siren song’ by ‘Maruv’, the stage name of singer Anna Korsun. With this song, Maruv won the Ukrainian final for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest. Maruv was supposed to go to Tel Aviv in Israel for the international final.

However, then right-wing Ukrainian government politicians intervened.

According to them, the Ukrainian representative at the song contest should make far-right Ukrainian nationalist ‘patriotic’ propaganda. And Ms Korsun did not do that.

So, Maruv was banned.

According to Dutch NOS TV today, the consequence is that there won’t be any Ukrainian singer at the final in Israel.

Authorities asked other Ukrainian singers to scab as substitutes for Maruv. But they refused.

With less than two weeks left in the presidential campaign, the Ukrainian Interior Minister has mobilized against incumbent president Petro Poroshenko the very same far-right forces that were instrumental in the imperialist-backed 2014 coup that brought Poroshenko to power. Last week, Poroshenko, who currently sits in third place in Ukraine’s Presidential election polls, behind comedian and leading candidate Volodmyr Zelenskiy and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was accosted by members of the far-right Azov Battalion-affiliated National Militia in the city of Zhytomyr during a campaign stop. In a photo that was widely shared on social media, Poroshenko was seen fleeing reporters and the far-right thugs while jumping through puddles in the street: here.

Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidential elections Sunday with over 73 percent of the vote, in a massive repudiation of the incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko, and the imperialist-orchestrated 2014 coup that brought him to power: here.

US, EU gave over $20 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine since 2014: here.

Ukraine government plagued by political infighting: here.