After a scandal hit Ukrainian national selection 2019 with disqualification of Maruv now similar thing happened in the pre-qualification phase with the only male young singer who submitted the application to take part in their national selection at Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2020 has been disqualified.

As we already wrote when we presented the second round of artists hoping to take part in the final of Ukrainian selection for Junior Eurovision 2020 Maksym Tkachuk applied with a performance of the Ukrainian cover version of the song Giamaica which dates back from the 1960s and was recorded by a number of Italian artists. Maksym has participated at a festival “Stars of the Albion” and that performance was the one which caused his disqualification from the national contest for JESC 2020 with the claims that it breaks the rules. Maksym was in the lead with more than 12 thousand likes, and that guaranteed his participation at the national selection but that performance is now deleted from the official youtube account of national preselection. The rules which they say were broken by Maksym are:

d) the participant guarantees that he has not carried out concert activities, performances, participation in any public and / or private events organized by state bodies, institutions, economic entities, etc. of the aggressor country or on the territory of the aggressor country, in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and / or in the occupied territory of Ukraine after 15.03.2014 and does not plan, will not make announcements of the relevant performance (s) both in the period before and during the Selection, and in the period after the Selection until the final date of the International competition “.

As the contest “Stars of the Albion” held from 28.02.2020 to 01.03.2020 was co-organized by the office “Russian House / Representation of Rossotrudnichestvo in London” shows that this organization is a body of executive power of the Russian Federation.

Former CEO of the Ukrainian national broadcaster, Mr. Zurab Alasania also wrote about this case on his Facebook you can find the post below.

Maksym is 12 years old orphaned boy from Volyn and in February-March this year he competed in the contest “Stars Of Albion” held in London here you can find the performance. Maksym is also known as the performer of covers of popular songs such as “Luna” by Alessandro Safina.

The National Public Television and Radio Company of Ukraine has refused to register Maksym for the National Selection to participate in the Junior Song Contest. This was stated in their letter received by Maksym’s legal guardian and grandmother Larisa Vladimirovna.

“They hinted to me that it was because of the song” Smuglyanka “. Nobody called from the TV channel and did not explain anything. I would like to ask them to tell me personally why. He received more than 12.000 votes, and more than 30.000 views. Maksym was upset because of this decision. First I was glad that he was going forward and then all of a sudden, he was removed from the contest. We try to console him, we say that he doesn’t need to worry, if he competed and they disqualified him after his competition it would’ve been even worse.”, said Larisa Vladimirovna in an interview.

Here you can find the first group of participants and here you can listen to third group of participants. Maksym’s performance was not the only one which was deleted from the official youtube account there was one more but the reasons haven’t been revealed so far.

What are your thoughts about the disqualification of Maksym? Let us know in the comments below and at our social media links!