Eurovision May Have Driven Russia and Ukraine Farther Apart

Russia’s relationship with Ukraine has long been fraught but at the Stockholm Globe on Saturday night during the Eurovision Song Contest final the relationship became a little bit cooler.

While all the talk in Australia was on Dami Im placing second, in Russia there was anger that Sergey Lazarev came in at third, with cries of bloc voting, a fabricated porn scandal and politics entering the Eurovision judging panel.

Ukrainian performer Jamala won the competition with “1944” a ballad about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars by Soviet authorities during World War II. The song was largely seen as a jab at the Kremlin.

Going into the competition Lazarev, a singer and dancer from Moscow, who rose to fame as a member of the group Smash!, was firm favourite with both pundits and bookmakers.

His performance of “You Are The Only One” included 3D stage effects and a passionate delivery. While some have said that it may have been too derivative of last year’s winner Måns Zelmerlöw, the performance ceratinlay had a ‘wow’ factor. Lazarev received the most televotes, with 361 to Ukraine's Jamala 323. But of the jury vote, eight of the 11 countries that gave 12 points to Ukraine gave none to Russia. Russia didn't give Ukraine a single jury vote either.

"It was not the Ukrainian singer Jamala and her song “1944” that won the Eurovision 2016, it was politics that beat art," Russian senator Frants Klintsevich said after the count.

Ukraine and Russia have been tussling in a bitter feud since Moscow annexed Crimea in February 2014 and was then accused of fuelling a bloody separatist uprising in the the country’s east.

Before the competition Russia received negative publicity surrounding the country's draconian anti-gay laws, and past 'porn' pictures of Lazarev emerged, despite the Kremlin trying to erase them from the internet.

The images feature the singer sitting naked in a room, holding a saw to the face of a woman handcuffed to a radiator. The Kremlin has dismissed claims the star has a secret porn past, insisting the pictures were part of a campaign to highlight issues with domestic violence.