Rome - (AFP) - The European "Eurovision" singing competition was often affected by geopolitical tensions in the "old continent", and the 2022 session does not deviate from this rule, as Russia was excluded from participating, while expectations showed that the song nominated by Ukraine is the most Good luck to win.
Ukraine will be represented by the Kalush Orchestra in the competition, whose finals will be held on May 14 in Turin, Italy, and its singers will perform the rap song "Stefania".
Traditional Ukrainian music appears in this song addressed to the mother, and among the sentences it includes, "I will always find my way home even if all the roads are destroyed."
Two weeks before this entitlement, Eurovision World.com, which collects the most prominent betting sites on the Internet, reported that Ukraine's winning rate of the title is 42 percent, and it is next far ahead of the Italian duo Mahmoud and Blanco (14 percent) and Sweden's Cornelia Jacobs ( 10 percent).
The list of countries most likely to win includes Britain, Spain, Poland, Greece, Norway, the Netherlands and Australia, while France ranked thirteenth.
There is "nothing new" in the Ukraine war's extreme overshadowing of the contest, as historian Dean Voltek of the University of Vienna, who has published books on the geopolitics of the Eurovision contest, noted to AFP in a statement to AFP.
In 1975 Greece boycotted the pageant in protest of Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, and in 1992 it was overshadowed by the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. In 2004, Ukraine won the competition, and then the following year, after the "Orange Revolution", a very political song was nominated, which ended up being accepted for participation.
Last year, the European Radio and Television Union disqualified Belarus from the competition, citing its decision that the lyrics of its nominated song directly attack democratic opposition to pro-Russian President Alexander Lukashenko. The title was won by the Italian rock band "Moniskin".
Expectations indicate that Ukraine may get a large number of sympathy votes, but its victory is not guaranteed.
"Musically, the Ukrainian contribution is strong, but there is something else. The crowd will certainly show strong support for Ukraine, but that doesn't mean it will win. In 1993, Bosnia and Croatia were not very high," even though they were under fire from Serb forces, noted Dean Voltek.
The editor-in-chief of the Eurovision fan site in Serbia, Evrovizija.rs, Slobodan Todorovic, said that this competition should not be just a political arena. And he considered that "any victory for Ukraine [for political reasons] will cast a shadow over Eurovision and the values it advocates, that is, neutrality, independence from politics, respect and promotion of diversity."

France-Eurofans Secretary Benoit Blaschik noted that Ukrainians have a great deal of sympathy in Europe, but added, "Whatever happens, they have a good song, and every year Ukraine's avant-garde has a wide following."
There are "blocks" that distinguish viewers' voting on television. At the beginning of Eurovision, the French-speaking countries (France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg) would vote together and subsequently reap all or most of the prizes. Then the Scandinavian bloc appeared, whose voices were also unified, after which "sub-blocks" arose in central and eastern Europe. "But these blocks have never been decisive in choosing a winner," Dean Voltek reports.
The list of winners in the last twenty years shows that knowing the results in advance is not possible, as Turkey won the title in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, Russia in 2008, Azerbaijan in 2011 or Israel in 2018, excluding the strongest countries in the competition such as Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain.
No less than 4,400 members of the General Organization of Eurovision Fans voted before the upcoming contest in Turin, and Ukraine finished only in eleventh place. The vote gave victory again to Sweden, ahead of Italy and Spain.
As for the Ukrainians affiliated with the organization, they gave the first place to Poland (the country that receives the most Ukrainian refugees), followed by Spain, France, Norway and Sweden.
Russian participants gave the maximum points (12 points) to fancy Russian Serbia, followed by Lithuania (which has a large Russian-speaking class), Spain and Latvia (also a former Soviet republic).
In any case, Ukraine does not need to win the contest to be a winner. Dean Voltek considered that "just being an actress on stage, being able for artists to leave their country, receiving a lot of support, in addition to excluding Russia, is already a victory for the Ukrainians."