After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been banned from competing in the Eurovision Song Contest. Now, the Kremlin has revived its own version of Eurovision, Intervision, which is broadcast on Saturday evening. The purpose is, according to the Kremlin, to "develop international cultural and humanitarian cooperation", reports BBC.
Criticized
Critics mean that it is more about creating a competition where Russia can participate and to draw attention from the war against Ukraine.
Russia has invited several political and economic allies from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Among others, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are participating.
Even the USA is participating with the Australian-Greek singer Vassy, who lives in Los Angeles. It is seen as a sign that the relationship between the USA and Russia has improved since Donald Trump took office as president.
The audience gets paid
The competition can be seen by about 4.3 billion people in the 23 participating countries.
”It is more than half of the world's population”, says a high-ranking official from the Kremlin to BBC.
According to information that SVT has produced, the audience in Moscow gets paid to attend. To attend, the people have also had to fill in a questionnaire with age and photo.
The winning entry will not be voted on publicly. It will instead be done by a jury, which consists of one person per country, through a voting system that "has been invented by a very famous scientist and mathematician”, reports Russian TV to BBC.
