National Final
Channel One used a national final to select the 13th Russian entry for Eurovision, having primarily used internal selections to select previous entries. Over 1000 entries were sent into Channel One. 50 of them were chosen and sent to a jury to select 15 that will compete in the televised national final on 7 March 2009. The winner was to be selected in the same voting method to be used at Eurovision, with both televoting and a jury vote. Venger Collective, Tim Rocks, Polina Griffith, Quatro are the following artists of Russian preselection that are breaking "1st of October rule", according to which participating songs, in full or in part, should not be publicly performed, released on audio or video, published in the internet or in any other way before 1st of October 2008. Channel One announced that Polina Griffith would sing "Cry For You" instead of "Love Is Independent". The other performers have decided to continue competing with their ineligible songs.
Different artists performed throughout the song including former Russian Eurovision entries, such as last year's winner Dima Bilan, Alsou and Serebro, and artists competing in this year's Eurovision also performed, including Jade Ewen for the United Kingdom, Patricia Kaas for France, Sakis Rouvas for Greece and AySel and Arash for Azerbaijan.
In the first round, jury and televoting selected three acts to qualify to a Super Final. In this Super Final, the winner will be decided solely by a jury. The three qualifying artists were Anastasiya Prikhodko with "Mamo" (means "Mother" in Ukrainian), Valeriya with "Back to Love", and Kvatro with "Ya tebya lyublyu".
| Draw | Artist | Song |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Semenovich | "Love lovila" |
| 2 | Tomas N'evergreen | "One More Try" |
| 3 | Alexa | "Ne dumat o tebye" |
| 4 | Plazma | "Never Ending Story" |
| 5 | Anastasiya Prikhodko | "Mamo" |
| 6 | Valeriya | "Back to Love" |
| 7 | Nano | "Traitor" |
| 8 | Tim Rocks | "The Happiest Man" |
| 9 | Princess Avenue | "Never, Never" |
| 10 | Nikolay Fokeyev | "You Can Stop The Time" |
| 11 | Venger Collective | "9 O'Clock Moscow" |
| 12 | Polina Griffith | "Cry for You" |
| 13 | Alexey Vorobyov | "Angelom byt" |
| 14 | Unisex | "Ai-ai-ai" |
| 15 | Arishata | "Breakdown" |
| 16 | Kvatro | "Ya tebya lyublyu" |
An eleven member jury selected the final winner from the three super finalists. The winner, receiving six votes to five, was Ukrainian singer Anastasiya Prikhodko, a last-minute entry to the competition, with the song "Mamo", performed in Russian and Ukrainian.
| Draw | Artist | Song |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anastasiya Prikhodko | "Mamo" |
| 2 | Valeriya | "Back to Love" |
| 3 | Kvatro | "Ya tebya lyublyu" |
Prikhodko's win sparked allegations of vote-rigging. Valeriya's producer Yusif Prigozhin did not agree with the bilingual nature of Prikhodko's song stating: “A song performed in Ukrainian can’t have anything to do with Russia”.
Read more about this topic: Russia In The Eurovision Song Contest 2009
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