Clutching bottles of craft beer and sleeping bags, Julia Tymoshenko and her friends gathered in a co-working space in central Kyiv to watch the grand final of the Eurovision song contest. They were sleeping over so they could keep watching, together, until the end – hours after the capital’s midnight curfew.
The hosting of the contest, which should have been in Ukraine, was relocated to Liverpool because of Russia’s war.
The combination of time difference and curfews also made it difficult to celebrate in Ukraine. While a few bars in Kyiv hosted pre-Eurovision parties, closing at about 10pm local time as the contest began, it was mostly an event to be followed at home.
For Tymoshenko, however, a keen Eurovision fan who assisted the stage director as a volunteer when Ukraine last hosted the event in 2017, it was an opportunity to host her first Eurovision party.
“The UK was the best choice for taking the contest. It is our biggest ally in Europe,” she said. “The adverts for the event made me cry. There was so much yellow and blue – small signs of support for Ukraine.”
Tymoshenko, 24, who has almost 30,000 Instagram followers, works for the charity project Saint Javelin and volunteers for the media outlet Ukraïner. She returned to Ukraine after studying abroad shortly before the full-scale invasion, staying once war broke out to help support her country.
She was helped to return to her family in her home village, once it was liberated, by the British volunteer Chris Parry, who was later killed in the country’s east, becoming one of at least eight UK citizens who have died in the war.
“He was a bright and selfless person. I was devastated when Chris died,” Tymoshenko said.
As the show began just after 10pm, introduced by artists from Ukraine and the UK, including the Princess of Wales playing piano to Kalush Orchestra’s song Stefania – last year’s winner for Ukraine – the first of the evening’s air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv.
Soon after, news of an explosion in Ternopil, western Ukraine, pinged in on phone screens around the room.
“It’s a Russian message to Eurovision!” the group joke, despite the sombre news – two people were injured. Ukraine’s entry this year, the duo Tvorchi, are from Ternopil, a city that is rarely targeted. Their song, Heart of Steel, was written during last year’s siege of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel works.
Moments such as these – of resilience, resistance and good humour tinged with sadness and determination – define life in wartime Ukraine.
One of the party, Viktor Perfetskyi, 22, an engineering student, who is also from Ternopil, is currently waiting to be mobilised.
“I have several friends who have died, it’s very bad when people you know are not here any more,” he said. “But I have an opportunity to help and I must use it.”
The Ukraïner team, sitting on beanbags in front of a large projector screen, were handed scorecards made by Tymoshenko. They rate each country’s entry out of 12 in four categories – song, vocals, performance and, most importantly, support for Ukraine. Eurovision rules state the contest is a non-political space, but it is hard for Ukrainians to view it in any other way.
Among the most unpopular entries was Estonia’s Alika, who performed in occupied Crimea in 2015, and Czechia’s Vesna. Their entry is supposed to be a celebration of Slavic sisterhood, with a chorus sung in Ukrainian, but one of the group is a Russian citizen and the watch party was not impressed. “Having a Russian sing this feels like cultural appropriation to us,” Tymoshenko said.
European solidarity was present throughout the Liverpool grand final and was a much-needed tonic for those watching in Ukraine. Ukrainian co-host Julia Sanina appeared next to Alesha Dixon, their dresses yellow and blue, and cheers rang around the room as she spoke to displaced Ukrainians in the audience. There were multiple clinks of glasses as the group saluted the UK.
As the points started to roll in, it was the very early hours of the morning in Kyiv and eyelids were starting to close. Sweden looked set to win and Ukraine were not performing too well – they ended up coming sixth – but the Ukraïner team were not fazed by the loss.
“Someone messaged me on Instagram earlier and asked me how they can donate money to Ukraine instead of voting,” said Tymoshenko. “That is the real reason why all this is important.”
