A Vietnamese pop singer won top honors at Russia’ s Intervision Song Contest, a Cold-War era music festival that Moscow revived in response to being kicked out of the global Eurovision spectacle for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Duc Phuc, who has nearly 2 million followers on Instagram, sang a dance-beat pop song based on a folktale about an ancient king repelling an invading army to take first prize in September 20 in Moscow.
A total of 22 performers and groups from countries across the world, including Belarus, Brazil, India, and China, sent contestants to the event, competing for a 30-million-ruble prize. ($360,000).
Among the contestants originally slated to participate was a US-born R&B singer named Brandon Howard, though he dropped out last week citing family reasons.
Howard’s place as the US entrant was then taken by Vassy, an Australian-born singer who also has a US passport.
But she then dropped out at the last minute due to “unprecedented political pressure from the government of Australia,” Intervision’s organizers said in a statement.
The original Intervision was first organized in Czechoslovakia in 1965, and grew to become the socialist alternative to Eurovision, which had been founded a decade earlier.
While it never rivaled the other contest’s popularity, Intervision carried political weight, projecting the supposed solidarity of the Warsaw Pact.
When Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst won Eurovision in 2014, Russian authorities announced plans to revive the competition as “an alternative to bearded Eurovision” but nothing came of it.
After its all-out invasion of Ukraine, Moscow was banned from Eurovision, along with other major global sporting and cultural events.
In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the return of Intervision.
