Hmm...
Another item from RFE/RL's news desk:
Ukraine Pulls Out Of Eurovision After Local Winner Rejects Conditions
Ukraine has announced it will not participate in the Eurovision 2019 song contest amid a scandal in its national selection process.
The National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine said on February 27 that Ukraine would not participate after singer Anna Korsun, who performs under the name Maruv and who won the domestic selection process, refused to sign a contract stipulating that she would not perform in Russia for at least three months after the competition and pledging not to make any "statements that may call into question the issue of the territorial integrity and security of Ukraine."
Relations between Ukraine and Russia have been strained over Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and Russia's military, political, and economic support of separatist entities in parts of eastern Ukraine. That conflict, which the International Criminal Court ruled in November 2016 was "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation," has left some 13,000 people dead, according to the United Nations.
Maruv withdrew from Eurovision consideration on February 25, accusing the authorities of "censorship."
The performers who came in second, third, and fourth place all refused to take Maruv's spot in the competition, which will be held in Israel in May.
Eurovision has been a field of conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the past.
In 2016, Ukraine infuriated Russia by submitting a ballad by singer Jamala that described the brutal 1944 Soviet deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
Russian officials argued that the song should have been disqualified under rules forbidding political content in performances.
When that entry won the competition, Kyiv hosted the 2017 rendition and refused to allow the Russian contestant to enter the country because she had performed in Crimea after the annexation.
With reporting by AFP and AP
Hmm...
Another item from our news desk:
'Crimea Must Be Returned To Ukraine,' U.S. Tells Russia
The United States has reaffirmed that it will maintain sanctions on Russia until it returns control of Crimea to Ukraine, nearly five years after Moscow annexed the peninsula.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russia's occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 has fueled "an escalation of Russian aggression."
"Crimea is Ukraine and must be returned to Ukraine’s control," a U.S.State Department statement quoted Pompeo as saying.
"During the past five years, Russian occupation authorities have engaged in an array of abuses in a campaign to eliminate all opposition to its control over Crimea," Pompeo said.
On February 27, 2014, masked gunmen seized Crimea's regional parliament in Simferopol and the government building and raised the Russian flag.
A referendum on the future of the peninsula, denounced as illegitimate by Washington, was held on March 16 of that year approving Crimea's annexation by Russia.
"The world has not forgotten the cynical lies Russia employed to justify its aggression and mask its attempted annexation of Ukrainian territory," Pompeo said, denouncing "the worsening repression by Russia's occupation regime in Crimea."
"The United States calls on Russia to release all of the Ukrainians, including members of the Crimean Tatar community, it has imprisoned in retaliation for their peaceful dissent," Pompeo said.
"The United States will maintain respective sanctions against Russia until the Russian government returns control of Crimea to Ukraine and fully implements the Minsk agreements," he said, referring to a Western-brokered 2015 peace agreement that has never been applied in its entirety.