‘Anti-Russian’ song by Ukrainian wins Eurovision

Moscow:

Jamala of Ukraine on Sunday won the immensely popular Eurovision Song Contest with a somber, controversial tune that evokes Moscow’s deportation of members of her Crimean ethnic group during World War II. She sang “1944,” a song about the deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union on orders of Josef Stalin. Her performance also was considered a strong rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 military push into Ukraine, according to European media reports. Russia annexed Crimea. Russian state media this week called the song anti-Russian; Moscow said it violated Eurovision rules.

Contest officials ruled the song didn’t breach rules preventing “lyrics, speeches or gestures of a political or similar nature.” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko tweeted his congratulations to Jamala. Ukraine missed the competition last year because of its financial crisis, according to British media. Jamala, whose full name is Susana Jamaladynova, told Ukraine Today in February that she wrote the song because she was inspired by a story her great-grandmother told her about the deportation of her family and others in Crimea.

“I would prefer that all these terrible things did not happen to my great-grandmother, and I would even prefer if this song did not exist,” the tearful competitor told reporters after the competition. CNN