Eurovision winners Kalush Orchestra auction off trophy to support Ukraine's army
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Kalush Orchestra put up for auction their trophy and the pink bucket hat worn by their lead singer during the contest.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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KYIV (NYTIMES) - Ukraine's victory at the Eurovision Song Contest in May brought national pride, joy and artistic prestige to the country amid the devastation of war.
Now, it will also help supply drones to the Ukrainian army.
Kalush Orchestra, the Ukrainian band that won Eurovision after sweeping the phone-in popular vote, put up for auction their trophy and the pink bucket hat worn by their lead singer during the contest, and the items netted more than US$1.2 million (S$1.6 million), the band's spokesman said in a statement on Monday (May 30).
"We believe that this is only the first victory before our biggest victory over the Russian aggressor," lead singer Oleh Psiuk said in a Telegram message.
The money is going to the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, an organisation founded by a Ukrainian TV presenter, and will be used to buy three drones that the army can use for surveillance, said Ms Maria Pysarenko, a spokesman for the foundation.
The trophy, a handmade glass microphone designed by Swedish artist Kjell Engman, was auctioned in cryptocurrency, Ms Pysarenko said.
WhiteBIT, a cryptocurrency exchange platform originally from Ukraine, secured the trophy on Sunday for US$900,000 after competing bids in the last minutes of the auction from businessmen from Kalush - the Ukrainian city Psiuk is from - and a charity fund from Washington.
"It's a big amount, but we understand that the aim is much bigger," said Ms Margarita Populan, a spokesman at WhiteBIT, adding that her company had worked to provide and coordinate support for Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
The winner of the bucket hat "with the sweat and tears of Oleh", as Prytula described it, was chosen at random in a separate raffle, where each ticket cost 200 Ukrainian hryvnia (S$9).
More than 30,000 people participated, raising more than US$300,000.
Mr Volodymyr Onyshchuk, a Ukrainian information technology engineer living in the Czech Republic who is a regular donor to Prytula's charity, won the prize.
He said in a phone interview that he had bought several tickets because he thought it was "a cool situation", adding that he planned to take a "picture for Facebook" with the hat before donating it to a museum in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, or in Kalush.
After winning Eurovision, Kalush Orchestra urged their fans to show support by donating to help the Ukrainian army.
"Every euro you donate will help save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers!" the band wrote in an Instagram post promoting the auction.
Eurovision's rules state that it is a "non-political event", but the competition has never been truly isolated from world politics.
Kalush Orchestra's winning song, Stefania, was written to honour Psiuk's mother. Although it does not have overtly political lyrics, it has been reinterpreted as a patriotic hymn to Ukraine as a motherland.
After the contest, the band released a music video for Stefania that shows wrecked buildings and women soldiers carrying children amid the rubble, in a clear reference to the war. It has been viewed nearly 20 million times.
"If Stefania is now the anthem of our war, I would like it to become the anthem of our victory," Psiuk wrote in the video's caption.
