You're reading: Lifestyle Blog: Russia’s Eurovision song calls for peace as Russians tweet crazy threats (VIDEO)

As Russian singer Polina Gagarina won second place at the Eurovision Song Contest in Austria on May 23 with "A Million Voices," an alternative music video for the song popped up online. The video mocks the song's call for peace, mixing the pop hit with scenes of Russian violence in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

The video was released on March 18, when it was already known that Gagarina will perform this song at the contest, but gained popularity only after the Eurovision finale.

Eurovision is beyond politics, according to organizers. But this year the show amazed with two things – a downright peace
message coming from an aggressor and European positive reaction to it.

While Gagarina sings about peace, the east of Ukraine suffers from regular shelling coming from Russian military and Russia-backed separatists who violate the ceasefire declared at Minsk
agreement on February 12.

“Praying for peace and healing, I hope we can start
again,” Gagarina sings.

The hypocrisy of the Russian participant’s song was mocked in a music video uploaded to YouTube by user 5PECTAT0R in the next few days after Gagarina’s
song release on March 15. The author called the video a “war cut.”

A video of Russian singer Polina Gagarina’s song of peace is interspersed with Russia’s waging of war in Ukraine.

For the first time since 2003, Ukraine did not
participate in the contest due to the tough
economic situation and war with Russia-backed separatists in the east.

The author mixed documentary shots of war scenes with original shots from the official video of “A Million Voices.” It contains footage from the Crimea
annexation in March 2014, shots of Ukrainian soldiers captured by pro-Russian rebels, Mariupol after the violent shelling in January, and screaming women.

The video’s finale is a bird’s-eye view of the ruins of Donetsk
airport, destroyed by war.

One of the captured Ukrainian soldiers shown in the video is Oleh
Kuzminykh, a commander of a team of Donetsk airport defenders known as “cyborgs.” He was captured by Givi, a commander of Somali battalion from the terrorist organization Donetsk People’s
Republic.

The video shows Givi
putting a sword to the neck of
Kuzminykh. Kuzminykh was captured at
the last day of hardest confrontation in Donetsk airport on January 20 and
released just recently on May 22.

In spite of politics, sanctions against Russia, all the propaganda
and counter-propaganda, many Europeans voted for Gagarina’s song. She
took the second place, while Swedish Mans Zelmerlow was crowned the winner.

While Gagarina performed, people in the audience waved rainbow flags, a symbol of the gay and lesbian community – one of the most suppressed social groups in Russia.

Only two countries didn’t give Gagarina a vote – San Marino and Lithuania – pushing themselves to the barrage of negativity from the Russians. The noisiest Twitter users spoke in favor of sending Russian tanks to Lithuania – comments that show that even while Russian authorities deny the presence of Russian military in Ukraine, regular Russians still believe they are there.

Here are some of the tweets, with translation:

Some of the Russian users tweets about Eurovision votes:

“Lithuania, tanks are coming”

“Hey Slovenia, got any extra territories? What if we find some?”

“Lithuania hasn’t given Russia any points, even though we didn’t take away a single piece of land from them, haven’t bombed them yet.”

“Georgia, just five points? The bastards can’t forget that we bombed and reduced their territory, even though many years have passed, what a rancorous people.”

“Lithuania R.I.P. 1009 – 2015.”

“12 bombers are flying… to Lithuania.”

“We really lack votes from DPR and LPR (terrorist organizations Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic).”