EBU Expels Russia 24 Hours After the Invasion of Ukraine

MAY 15 2022 · 12:40

Russia (expelled) · "N/A" · Russia · 2022 Language: N/A · Venue: PalaOlimpico · Host: Turin, Italy · Type: boycott · Broadcast: streaming era 24 February 2022: Russia invades Ukraine. 25 February: the EBU Executive Board issues a statement that Russian participation in Eurovision 2022 'would bring the competition into disrepute'. Russia is formally expelled. Nordic broadcasters had threatened mass withdrawal if Russia were allowed. Russian broadcasters RTR and Channel One subsequently exit the EBU entirely on 26 February. Context Russia had won Eurovision in 2008 with Dima Bilan, hosted in Moscow in 2009, and had been a consistent top-10 presence through the 2010s. The Crimean annexation in 2014 had complicated but not broken the relationship. The 2022 full-scale invasion made continued participation politically impossible. Legacy Russia has not participated in Eurovision in 4 years as of 2026. The expulsion is Eurovision's most dramatic political intervention ever, surpassing even the 1969 Austria boycott in scope. Kalush Orchestra's win for Ukraine at Turin 2022 — massively boosted by solidarity televoting — completed the geopolitical inversion of Russia's 2008 Moscow high-water mark.