Vietnamese performer Duc Phuc won the Moscow-hosted “Intervision Song Contest” this weekend, a revival of a Cold War-era alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest that strongman Vladimir Putin hailed as a display of “respect for traditional values” and “diversity.”
Putin delivered a televised address to Russians and viewers internationally in which he claimed the revived Intervision Song Contest was “one of the most anticipated cultural events of the year,” a claim not corroborated by known viewership or international media attention.
“The atmosphere of creative freedom, kindness, and mutual respect make it a real holiday for the artists and the audience,” he declared. “Culture and music have no borders. Today’s gala is to show the uniting power of art.”
“Russia has always been and remains a country open for communication and constructive cooperation,” Putin claimed. “We hold our traditions dear and respect traditions of others. It is the respect for traditional values and the diversity of cultures that actually serve as the basic idea of this contest and inspires its participants to creative achievements.”
Absent from Putin’s remarks was any mention of his repeated refusal to engage in “communication and constructive cooperation” to end the most urgent crisis facing Russia, his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, prolonged by his reluctance to dialogue with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following a meeting with President Donald Trump in August.
In addition to a speech from Putin, viewers of Intervision witnessed singers representing four continents perform in pursuit of the ultimate prize, 30 million rubles ($360,000). The list of competing nations included a host of communist and other authoritarian regimes, including China, Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Also competing were India and Brazil, both allied with Russia through the anti-American BRICS coalition.
Duc Phuc, the Vietnamese singer, performed “Phù Đổng Thiên Vương,” a song telling the story of an ancient king.
While the Intervision event was notably more subdued in tenor than the more widely popular Eurovision contest, it kept the format of national singers performing original songs and professional juries helping determine a winner. It adopted a slogan — “Unity Through Music” — that clearly alluded to the longstanding Eurovision motto, “United by Music.”
Eurovision is one of the world’s most-watched live events, attracting 160 million viewers in May 2025. Next year’s edition — set to be hosted by Vienna, Austria — will be the 70th. During the Soviet era, a rival event emerged known as the “Intervision Song Contest,” giving countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain an opportunity to compete under the watchful and censorious eye of their respective dictatorships. The concept of an international song competition was popular enough for much of the 1970s and 1980s, however, that a wide variety of European countries participated in Intervision at the time, including regulars at Eurovision such as Switzerland, Australia, Finland, and Spain.
The contest was largely forgotten to history upon the fall of the Soviet Union, which allowed a host of former Eastern Bloc countries, including Russia, to enter the Eurovision fray. Russia debuted in Eurovision in 1944 and has won once, in 2008.
Eurovision is run by the European Broadcast Union (EBU), an international television entity, and countries are represented by the national public broadcasters. The EBU chose to expel both Russia and Belarus from Eurovision in 2022 following Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the winningest countries in the tournament and the winner of the 2021 contest. The idea to revive Intervision gained traction following the Russian expulsion from Eurovision.
With little international fanfare and no clear indication of who was in charge of choosing competing artists in the competition, the Intervision Song Contest took place in Moscow on Saturday. It attracted 22 competitors who sang on stage that day. Intervision organizers also claimed to have secured a 23rd competitor, the United States, but a series of bizarre occurrences conspired to keep an American from taking the stage.
In August, Foreign Ministry official Alexander Alimov announced that the United States would compete in Intervision, raising the question of who the performer would be and what American entertainment entity, if any, was involved in selecting a national performer. There is no indication that America’s public broadcaster, PBS, had any involvement with Intervision.
Intervision soon announced that singer B. Howard would represent the United States. The Intervision website boasted he was a “descendant of a musical dynasty… His mother, Miki Howard… was managed in the ’80s by the head of the legendary Jackson family,” and claimed he would perform the song, “We Are Champions.” Howard released a song with the same name, which appears to have been the potential competing song, in 2020.
Last week, days before the concern, Howard withdrew from the contest, alleging family reasons for his inability to compete. Intervision officials then announced that Australian-Greek singer Vassy, who recently obtained American citizenship, would represent the United States. The Intervision apparatus did not offer any indication as to who chose either artist or whether they represent any American authorities.
“It was unclear how he came to represent the United States in the contest, whose rules state that any individual, business, or institution can nominate an artist to take part,” the left-wing New York Times noted in its coverage.
Adding to the confusion, an hour into the contest, a host announced that Vassy also would not compete. Intervision officials published a bizarre statement blaming the government of Australia for her withdrawal.
“For reasons beyond the control of the organizers and the U.S. delegation, caused by unprecedented political pressure from the Government of Australia,” the statement read, “singer VASSY (a citizen of the United States and Australia) will not be able to perform in the final show of the contest.”
The statement insisted that the “United States remains a full-fledged participant of Intervision and will be represented in the international jury by the legendary vocalist of Deep Purple.”
It concluded with a personal statement from “Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the contest, Sergey Lavrov,” whom it did not note is also the foreign minister of Russia, saying, “We are not striving for any political effect. We want the original purpose of a person and his or her identity to be respected and realized in free interaction with others, enriching one another through the exchange of spiritual values.”
The non-political nature of Eurovision is at the crux of its identity. Performers are not allowed to sing songs with political lyrics and, as contestants and audience members have tested the boundaries of that rule, organizers have become stricter in limiting what sorts of flags and symbols can be displayed in the contest. The Russian government has repeatedly complained that its expulsion from the competition for invading another competitor was inherently political and has touted Intervision as the true “non-political” musical event.
The New York Times noted that little evidence suggests any major interest from the general public in the Russian contest, political or otherwise. Notably, searches of the pages of the Global Times, China’s top English-language online newspaper, and Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, yield no results about the song contest. Only one such article about the contest, published last week, appears on the website of Venezuelan state broadcaster VTV.
In Russia, the New York Times noted that the government splurged on significant advertising to generate interests, “but Russians never demonstrated much buy-in. Russian news outlets reported that people were being hired to pose as fans of some competing countries, greeting artists at the airport and showing support at the arena.”
The contest concluded with the announcement that Saudi Arabia would host the 2026 edition — a departure from Eurovision tradition, where the champion of the prior year typically hosts. One notable exception was the 2023 edition hosted by Liverpool, the United Kingdom, as the 2022 winner, Ukraine, could not guarantee the safety of the contest due to constant Russian bombing.
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