Nazi Allegations Clouding Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest

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El Kravchuk, Ukrainian Popular Singer | Photo 02

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uploaded by Aris Jansons

Ukrainians have evidently got used to all dirty tricks in the course of selection of finalists for the national competition of the Eurovision song contest, however, the recent attack against the author of lyrics of one of the entries is on the verge of inciting an international religious conflict.

A visitor of the Eurovision's Ukrainian website, a resident of Dnipropetrovsk, called the lyricist of El Kravchuk's (Andrei Kravchuk) song, My Hope, Abbot Daniil, serving with the Russian Orthodox Church in Germany, 'the priest of fascists'. The obscene comment was soon removed from the website, but as it turned out, the story has not ended yet.

Abbot Daniil (Andris Irbits) was born and raised in the former Soviet Union and both of his grandfathers were fightinng in the WW2 with the Red Army, thus he and his family felt themselves painfully insulted. Ukraine's online paper, Dusya, is quoting him as saying that he does not understand "this hype that has risen over the Eurovision final in Ukraine. In Germany such things would never happen."

In Germany, any statements treading on fascism, are treaded with increased wariness. According to Abbot Daniil, who recently visited Kiev, the news about the ill-inclined Ukrainian commentator has even reached the Federal Chancellor's office. The secret services have allegedly showed interest in finding the person who, in fact, has miscalled about 800,000 Orthodox Germans (ie, Ukrainians, Russians, Serbs, Armenians, etc.) the Nazis. The offender is to be ordered to ask these citizens for forgiveness and most likely will be banned from entering Germany.

Ryna, one of Eurovision's Ukrainian website visitors, marks, "It is meanly and unworthy to offend Kravchuk that he on his own, without the support of tycoons, only thanks to his staunch fans and his talent, has been able to priceworthly compete with other strong participants". Meanwhile, El Kravchuk, one of the leaders of popular voting for Eurovision's Ukrainian finalists, visited a children cancer center with a charity concert.