Russia Revives Intervision Song Contest as Kremlin Rival to Eurovision

Rus­sia is reviv­ing the Inter­vi­sion song con­test as part of a cul­tur­al push to pro­mote con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues and defy West­ern norms. On 17 Sep­tem­ber 2025, Yahoo News report­ed that Moscow will host the revived Inter­vi­sion Song Con­test this week­end, fea­tur­ing over 20 acts from coun­tries includ­ing Belarus, Chi­na, India, South Africa, and Cuba. The arti­cle begins:

Rus­sia is aim­ing to return to the inter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al stage as host of a revived music com­pe­ti­tion, the Inter­vi­sion Song Con­test, sched­uled for Sat­ur­day in Moscow. The event is intend­ed as a rival to the Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test, from which Rus­sia was banned due to its inva­sion of Ukraine in 2022. The Inter­vi­sion con­cept is not new — a sim­i­lar com­pe­ti­tion exist­ed dur­ing the Cold War as a cul­tur­al coun­ter­weight to the West and to pro­mote artists in the Sovi­et sphere. Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin ordered its revival in Feb­ru­ary as way of direct­ly chal­leng­ing Europe’s beloved musi­cal extrav­a­gan­za, which was also pop­u­lar in Rus­sia. In fact, Russ­ian singer Dima Bilan’s 2008 vic­to­ry had brought Euro­vi­sion to Moscow the next year.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/russia-brings-back-intervision-kremlin-132425353.html

Key Points

• Inter­vi­sion, revived by Krem­lin order, aims to com­pete with Euro­vi­sion and pro­mote “tra­di­tion­al values.”
• Par­tic­i­pants include Chi­na, India, Cuba, and Ser­bia — the only coun­try in both contests.
• Russia’s entry is Shaman, a nation­al­ist singer sanc­tioned by the EU for sup­port­ing the Ukraine war.
• Offi­cials reject LGBTQ+ themes, call­ing Euro­vi­sion a “freak show” and empha­siz­ing cul­tur­al purity.

In 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) pub­lished a report, iden­ti­fy­ing Rus­sia as a major actor in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA). The syn­op­sis of that report begins

Rus­sia is a pro­lif­ic actor in the influ­ence oper­a­tions are­na, both in the US and Europe. Russ­ian Pres­i­dent PUTIN has expressed an inter­est in Rus­sia becom­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of a new glob­al con­ser­v­a­tive alliance, and Euro­pean far-right lead­ers have tak­en pro-Russ­ian posi­tions based on a sim­i­lar ide­ol­o­gy. Hun­gary is at the cen­ter of a devel­op­ing alliance between Euro­pean far-right nation- alists and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives that Rus­sia could poten­tial­ly exploit for use in infor­ma­tion war­fare. This alliance oper­ates under the rubric of “Nation­al Con­ser­vatism,” cen­tered on nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions and rep­re­sent­ing a poten­tial­ly rad­i­cal change for the US con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment away from long-held Rea­gan-era philosophies.

Read the full report here.

Ear­li­er this week, the GIOR report­ed that Vladimir Putin’s cul­tur­al ties direc­torate has served as a covert front for Russ­ian espi­onage and soft pow­er pro­jec­tion across for­mer Sovi­et states.

Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.