ukrainian culture

What Eurovision means to Ukrainians at war

What Eurovision means to Ukrainians at war

Where else will you find banana-inspired wolves, dubstep rapping astronauts, or earworms about vampires? It’s Eurovision, of course: the 70-year-old song contest that pits nations against each other in an annual spectacle of camp, kitsch, and catchy melodies. But for Ukrainians – who have won the contest three times in the past 20 years – the contest is about something much more. On GZERO Reports, we visit a secret Eurovision watch party outside of Kyiv, a drag party in New York City, and look at how Eurovision is more political than you – or those wolves, astronauts, and vampires – could imagine.

Putin’s war brings big changes to Little Odessa

GZERO World Clips

Putin’s war brings big changes to Little Odessa

For years, one of the most popular grocery stores in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn was called “A Taste of Russia.” Then, in late February, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine. Within a week, the store’s co-owner, Bobby Rakhman, had taken down his sign and replaced it with a new one: “International Food.” “When the war started,” says Rakhman, who came here from the Soviet Union as a child in the 1970s, “we felt very uncomfortable with the name Taste of Russia. Even though it didn't mean anything political, it made people feel bad that the name Russia was associated with a store located in the midst of, as we call it, ‘Little Odessa’.”