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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.
For the uninitiated, the colorful annual Eurovision Song Contest pits countries against each other in a spectacle of camp, kitsch, and catchy pop music. It’s like the Olympics meets American Idol meets Burning Man. Each country submits an original song, and the winner is chosen through a combination of audience and professional jury votes.
The European Broadcasting Union, which organizes Eurovision, says the contest isn’t political (they turned down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's request to speak at the finale), but in its almost 70-year history, politics have always found a way of creeping in.
Last Saturday’s Grand Finale was no exception. This year’s contest, held in Liverpool, England, was full of messages of unity and support for Ukraine, who could not host Eurovision after winning in 2022 because of the Russian invasion. GZERO traveled to two very different Eurovision watch parties—one in the heart of New York City and one in an undisclosed location on the outskirts of Kyiv—to see how politics and pop music come together for fans around the world.
"Just to see so much solidarity and so much diversity of thought and backgrounds embracing Ukraine through the power of music is very encouraging,” said Maxim Ibadov, the National Coordinator of RUSA LGBTQ+ and organizer of the NYC event, “Because Ukraine has beautiful culture and I’m so happy it’s being celebrated.”
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television, airing nationwide. Check local listings.
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Surprise, Vladimir Putin: Why Ukrainians resisted Russian "liberation"
Vladimir Putin has made many mistakes in Ukraine, but for political scientist Ivan Krastev, the biggest one was thinking Ukrainians would welcome the Russian invasion.
Perhaps he expected it would be like when he annexed Crimea, but Ukraine clearly did not want to be "liberated," Krastev tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Why? For one thing, he says that Ukrainian public opinion toward Russia has changed a lot since 2014. For another, Putin loves to talk about feeling humiliated but he cares little about humiliating others.
And then there's how Ukrainians and Russians feel differently about the state.
Russians, Krastev explains, believe in a strong state above a strong society, while Ukrainians want the people come before the state — which explains why Russians have traditionally misread Ukraine.
Watch the GZERO World episode: How Putin created Ukraine’s determination to resist
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 ordered 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’.”
Alex Kliment visits New York's "Little Odessa" for an episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. Watch the video above.
Brighton Beach and the surrounding areas of South Brooklyn are home to tens of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their families. The Little Odessa nickname stuck because so many of them, like Rakhman, came originally from the Ukrainian port city of the same name. As the story goes, those early migrants settled down here, next to the sea, because it reminded them of home.
Today, more than a hundred thousand people in South Brooklyn speak Russian, making it one of the largest Russian-speaking communities in America. Along the main drag of Brighton Beach Avenue, signs in Cyrillic are everywhere, advertising pharmacies, grocery shops, bookstores, and restaurants.
But while the language of Pushkin and Gogol has long been a thread that holds this community together, the war has changed how people relate to Russia itself.
It used to be that people here would identify simply as “Russian,” whether they were from Russia itself or other former Soviet states, says Michael Levitis, a Moscow-born local who hosts a popular weekly Russian-language radio show.
“It’s because they spoke Russian and it’s just easier to tell Americans, ‘I’m Russian,’” he says.
“However, now people are very careful to differentiate themselves. They say ‘I’m actually Ukrainian,’ or ‘I’m a Jew from Ukraine,’ or ‘I’m a Jew from Russia.’”
The first big wave of Russian speakers here were Jews fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. In the years since they’ve been joined by people from across the former USSR. The most recent wave of immigration has come from Central Asian Republics like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Support for Ukraine has been strong since the war began. Several hundred people showed up to a pro-Ukraine rally on the boardwalk in early March, and there have been a number of community-wide efforts to get food, clothing, and money to the people of Ukraine.
“We feel it's us,” that the war is happening to, “it's not them,” says Lea Kushnirova, a Russian Jew who emigrated to Brighton Beach from Leningrad, today’s St. Petersburg. “It's part of us, and everybody is very disturbed by what’s happened there.”
But despite the outward support for Ukraine, there have been some divisions, says, Levitis, who also runs a large Facebook group for local Russian speakers.
While most people lament the war itself, some are sympathetic to Putin’s reasons for invading, especially among those who get their news primarily from Russian channels.
Some families have even agreed not to talk about the issue over the dinner table, Levitis says, “because people are really getting into raw emotions.”
Rakhman, the grocery store owner, says these days he tries to “stay away from political views or opinions because people have mixed emotions” about the conflict.
There has also been a backlash against businesses that are perceived to be “Russian.” Restaurants associated with Russia have suffered boycotts and vandalism in New York and other parts of the US. The irony, says Levitis, is that many of these businesses are owned by Ukrainians or Russian Jews – precisely the people who now wish to distance themselves from the “Russian” identity.
As the war drags on, these underlying tensions in the community will persist. But one local resident directly affected by the Russian invasion hopes that, on a more basic level, the conflict can push people towards a bigger realization.
“There are a lot of things that people here have to rethink now,” says Maryna Gladyschuk, a local retired nurse from Ukraine whose father and sister are still there.
“Especially in the older community,” she says, “and probably everybody else too. Just to realize how lucky they are to be alive, to have good things, every morning.”