Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017

wiwibloggs.com/2017/03/22/ukraine-bans-russias-eurovision-2017-singer-yulia-samoylova-entering-country/182149/

For once i love their song and this happens

Edit: Now that I finally understand the situation I consider this as provocation from Russia to make Ukraine look as bad character as they knew this would happen eventually..

oh god...

Looks like 2017 will be to Eurovision what Gabon is to Survivor 

Anyway on the topic of Julia's ban, I understand that the law is the law, they have to respect it blah blah blah.... What I don't understand is why were Ukraine and the EBU foolish enough not to take the initiative to lay out a plan for something like this? Russia is like the arrogant kid at school, he thinks he is the best and because of that he feels the need to constantly showcase his greatness. They should have known something like this was potentially going to happen, so what they should have done was lay out a course of action. Could an exemption be made? Could they have set guidelines for Russia to abide by, should they still choose to participate? Instead, they just waited for something like this to happen and it created an absolute mess. Now everything is incredibly dramatic, and this is going to reflect poorly on Ukraine. Had they laid out a plan last year before Russia had the chance to begin selecting their entrant, this would have forced Russia to either abide by the rules with everyone knowing they were already in place, or withdraw. However because of this, and a scramble to ban Julia we now have everything blown out of proportion.

I don't think this is the last we'll hear about this issue so I don't know what the outcome will be, all I know is that it will be an ugly one.

Here's a more official statement:
Officials of the Ukrainian border authorities announced in 2014 that an entry to Crimea not from the mainland Ukraine will be considered as an "illegal entry to the territory of Ukraine". In practice, it means that if, after entering Crimea from mainland Russia, a foreign citizen tries to enter the mainland Ukraine, he/she will be subject to a administrative or criminal prosecution (a fine, a possible denial of entry to Ukraine or an imprisonment).

This statemnt just proves that it was well know for everyone since 2014 that this kind of thing might happen, so I agree with you that Russia planned this to make Ukraine look bad, although the law is active since 2014, so everyone should understand that Ukraine didn't make this law only a few days/weeks ago just because of this "accident" with Julia...

What I mean is - The Law is a Law! No matter wheather you're a celebrity, president, king or whoever - the law is the same to everyone. If you break the law (and this law, as I've noticed, only russians tend to break, because Julia isn't the first russian artist that has been denied traveling to Ukraine because of the same or close to that reason), then you should face the consequences... Though there is also a "lighter punishment" to this law - a fine, so that might be something EBU and Ukraine might end up with in this situation or just allow her particiate...

I'm not against russians, ukrainians or any other nations, but I respect the laws of a country, even if I think that some of them might be stupid...