The head nods. Good, yes wise decision not to let the European Song Contest 2023 take place in Ukraine. After all, the winning country of this year’s competition has the right to host the biggest show on European television.
It is now being waived, as it is said that after detailed analyzes the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the broadcaster UA:PBC came to the conclusion that the country could not guarantee the organization and implementation of the complex event due to the Russian invasion.
That’s right, the ESC is an extremely complex event. In 2022, 40 countries were involved, and each participation was preceded by castings, preliminary rounds and voting, so that 25 artists and groups of artists could finally perform for victory in Turin. Anyone can imagine the breadth, height and depth of organization, planning and investment so that Europe turns on the TV on the Saturday of the decision.
It’s true, an event in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, is always under the verdict of having to be canceled all of a sudden. Who knows whether the warmonger Putin would not have given the ESC a very welcome reason for the next rocket attack.
The EBU will have calculated all this even more than the Ukrainian broadcaster. Although it is fair to assume that the Broadcasting Union’s decision was not made out of concern for Ukraine, but out of concern for a missed television event. Ukraine’s Culture Minister Olexander Tkachenko says his country has been presented with a fait accompli.
It’s amazing that so many months before the date there is certainty about how impossible an ESC is in Ukraine. Does the EBU actually employ prophets in well-tempered Geneva?
Before the cancellation, the belief was and still is that Ukraine’s art and culture is best protected and preserved when art and culture, coined here in pop culture and entertainment, take place in Ukraine. Because it makes a huge difference whether culture is practiced in the country or as an exile culture.
Glasgow is already offering itself as a replacement location for the ESC 2023. Bet that the participants from Ukraine will be cheered again? That has something of the alms, all the more so as the victory of the Kalush Orchestra in Turin was not a caress, but artistically justified.
The brave Europeans can now consider whether, apart from sending weapons to the Ukrainians, they also want to get involved with art and culture as a means of survival. The prematurely canceled Eurovision Song Contest poses this fundamental question only more sharply.
A series of concerts is planned for this year and 2023 in Kyiv. Till Lindemann has been announced for November, Dieter Bohlen (!) is to follow him, and the Ukrainian band “Okean Elzy” has been announced for June 24, 2023 in the National Stadium. No one can say today which performance will actually take place. Nevertheless, there is great satisfaction. In other words: Ukraine is bigger than an ESC in Ukraine.
