The Ukrainian selection to the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2020 has its winner and it’s: Oleksandr Balabanov!

A curious detail is that he does this with the public voting still going on!
This is possible because of the following: 8 jury members voted on the songs, each giving one point to their favourite, while the public collectively give 1 point to the entry that comes out on top in that voting.
Among the jury members we find familiar Eurovision faces such as Ukrainian host (Junior Eurovision 2009 and 2009 and Eurovision 2017) and commentator Timur Miroshnychenko and even Eurovision 2016 winner Jamala!
The other jury members were Alina Pash, Lyubov Morozova, Dmytro Shurov, Larysa Klyuyevska, Taras Topolya and Ruslana Khazipova.

With the jury members having voted, this is how it stands at the moment:

1. Oleksandr Balavanov – 5 votes
2. Olena Usenko – 3 votes
3. Yaroslav Politov – 1 vote

It has been impossible for Olena to catch up with Oleksandr, even if she becomes the winner of the public voting tomorrow.
Ukrainian broadcaster UA:PBC is set to officially announce the results on September 12.

Oleksandr is from the city of Donetsk and started singing early: from the age of 4 in a folk singing group!
When he was 8, he moved to the capital of Kyiv with his parents so he could enroll in the music department of the art school there, to train his talent as a pop vocalist as well.
He has won about 40 national and internations festivals and competitions already and is fluent in English already, all while studying German and Turkish as well!

Meanwhile Oleksandr will be the first boy to represent Ukraine at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest since 2009, when Andranik Alexanyan represented the country in the edition Timur Miroshnychenko hosted!

Oleksandr will sing his entry ‘Відкривай’ (‘Vidkryvay’), which means ‘Open’ in Ukrainian!
Give it a listen here:

The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2020 is set to take place in Warsaw, Poland on the 29th of November.