Russia was banned from the Eurovision Song Contest following its February 2022 offensive in Ukraine
Published: 03 Feb 2025 - 09:16 pm | Last Updated: 03 Feb 2025 - 09:20 pm
In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russian President Vladimir Putin lays flowers at the monument 'Rubezhny Kamen' (Boundary Stone) in Kirovsk, Leningrad region, on January 27, 2025. (Photo by Vyacheslav Prokofyev / POOL / AFP)
Moscow: President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a decree on holding an international music contest called "Intervision" in Russia this year, after the country was banned from the Eurovision Song Contest.
A contest of this name was held among countries allied with the USSR in the Soviet era. Russia has since made several attempts to revive the format.
The European Broadcasting Union, the organiser of Eurovision, banned Russia after its February 2022 offensive in Ukraine, meaning it cannot enter or broadcast the contest.
The Kremlin decree sets out a plan to hold the alternative contest, called Intervideniye in Russian, or Intervision, in Moscow and the surrounding region, with the aim of "developing international cultural and humanitarian cooperation".
Deputy prime minister Dmitry Chernyshenko is named as the head of the organising committee.
Presidential envoy Mikhail Shvydkoi told TASS state news agency last year that the contest would be held in September 2025, adding that "almost 20 countries" were ready to take part, including all the members of the BRICS and CIS blocs.
The Kremlin decree did not name a date for the contest.
BRICS members include Brazil, India and China, while the CIS is made up of the ex-Soviet countries still allied with Russia.
The Intervision song contest was held in the 1960s and 1970s, principally involving countries from the eastern bloc, including Poland and Czechoslovakia.
But some countries from outside eastern Europe also took part.
In the post-Soviet era, Russian television aired several shows of the same name on a smaller scale. In 2014 Russia announced plans to revive the contest that did not materialise.
Russia participated in Eurovision from 1994 to 2021, entering some of its biggest stars. It won in 2008 with Dima Bilan performing "Believe". The contest was then hosted by Moscow at its Olympic stadium in 2009.
Russian senator Liliya Gumerova told TASS Monday that the Intervision contest would be a "window of opportunity to promote real music" and "not fake values that are alien to any normal person", slamming Eurovision for including performers such as Austrian drag performer Conchita Wurst.
