Kalush Orchestra

Romania, Georgia and Azerbaijan accused the organizers of Eurovision 2022 in Turin of changing their scores. The head of the Romanian delegation at Eurovision, Iuliana Marchuk, in an interview with the TVR channel, said that the jury of their country sent a maximum of 12 points to Moldova, but as a result, Ukraine got them. – RIA Novosti quotes him. At the same time, the Romanian TV presenter, who was supposed to announce the scores, was not shown on the air, citing problems with the broadcast.

Georgia and Azerbaijan also complained of falsification during the voting: they gave Ukraine a maximum of 12 points, but in the end England took them. Representatives of the countries also had to announce the results, but a representative of the European Broadcasting Union did instead. At the same time, Azerbaijani TV presenter Narmin Salmanova, who was expected to announce the results of the jury voting, said that there were no problems with the broadcast.

The organizers of the competition announced that there were irregularities in the jury voting in six countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania, Poland, Montenegro and San Marino): they were suspended in the second semi-final due to “wrong voting order”. on 12 May.

Previously, the organizers of the contest were also accused by the audience of falsifying the vote. After the semi-finals, the audience decided that the representatives of Albania and Latvia were underestimated, so the musicians could not reach the final. Dutch respondents, on the contrary, found the estimates too high.

The Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra became the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest according to the combined results of the audience voting and jury ratings: representatives of Ukraine received 631 points. British musician Sam Ryder took the second place with 466 votes.

After the winners were announced, Kalush Orchestra members addressed the audience in English from the stage and requested support for Ukraine regarding Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. While political calls from the stage are prohibited by contest rules, the administration considered the winners’ announcement “a more human gesture than a political one.”

Russia and Belarus did not participate in the song contest this year due to the Russian Federation’s special operations in Ukraine.