On Sunday, Russia protested the results of Saturday night's Eurovision Song Contest finals, in which Ukrainian singer Jamala won with a song about Josef Stalin's bloody 1944 mass deportations of ethnic Tatars — including Jamala's grandmother — from Crimea to Central Asia. Jamala, the stage name for Susana Jamaladinova, 32, beat Australia's Dami Im and Russian singer Sergey Lazarev, who won the popular vote but placed third when the popular tally from around Europe was added to the scores from the juries. Crimean Tatars, who opposed Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, celebrated the victory.
Eurovision entries can't be political, and Jamala insisted that her song, "1944," was not about politics. Lazarev's song, "You Are the Only One," is a catchy dance number, and he performed it using a set that allowed him to climb an LED backdrop and ride a virtual iceberg through space. On Facebook, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said mockingly that next year's winner would sing about Syria's "bloody" Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia. She even suggested some lyrics: "Assad blood, Assad worst. Give me prize, that we can host."
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