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Hungary wants Ukraine inside the EU for the same reason we want Serbia to join: it would be great for the Hungarian minority living in these countries. I mean, it's quite simple, the EU can protect the Hungarian minorities inside these countries once they join the Union. Edit: Also, just think about it: Ukraine and Serbia would be more right-wing friends for Orbán inside the EU. Everyone likes Ukraine now, but I think there's a good chance they would be part of the "anti-liberal gang" with Poland and Hungary once they join.

It's not "most of the world". It's US + Europe + Japan + South Korea + Canada, it's countries inside the American sphere of influence. That's our part of the world, but not most of the world, not in terms of number of nations, not in terms of population, far from it.

It's not whataboutism to point out that one part of the world clearly has more control over sports than the other. "Most of the world" didn't unite. It's the West that's united. The Arab countries are similarly united against Israel, but that didn't result in the total exclusion of Israel from sports.

It's foolish to think that the US would ever get this kind of treatment if they start a war anywhere. I wouldn't even blame racism why there wouldn't be boycotts in the case of another war in the Middle East similar to Iraq. People are only up in arms about this war because they see Ukraine as a democratic country that wants to join the West. If Russia would have invaded Belarus the international reaction wouldn't be anywhere near as dramatic. Sure, people were protesting against wars initiated by the US, but in the end it's our ideology (democracy, freedom) against a country or countries with an opposing ideology. If the US invades Iran the next day in the name of protecting freedom and democracy and whatever bullshit casus belli they fabricate this time, Europe would join them, and nobody would even talk about sanctions.

The issue with that is you get two deadlines instead of one. Believe me you don't want that, users miss the deadlines all the time, it's hard as it is to keep the contest on schedule. The best thing we could do is to not allow submissions on the first week. Here's the example with the two weeks window that we usually have (I have originally expanded it to three weeks this time because of the Winter Paralympics): Sunday, February 20th 10:00 National Jury Registration Window Open Sunday, February 27th 10:00 Entries Selection Window Open Sunday, March 6th 23:59 National Jury Registration and Entries Selection Window Closed

New Schedule You still got 5 days to vote on the poll, but it seemed quite obvious what the result will be, so I made a new schedule. Unless you change your minds in the next couple of days the contest will be postponed by one month. The registration and selection deadline is April 10th. You are free to post your songs any time you want until that date, the selection isn't closed for a month. The Grand Final will be on May 7th. Further delays or cancellation is possible if the political climate of the world warrants it.

Just some historical context: Hungarians were invited to a negotiation on November 3rd 1956, our defense minister attended it. The Hungarian delegation was captured by the KGB. On the next day the Soviet army entered Budapest and it was all over. The Ukrainians attending this negotiation must be ready for that they might find themselves in a Russian torture chamber by the end of the day. They could have found an actual neutral place for this event to take place, instead they might as well be traveling to Moscow, Belarus isn't safe for them.

Zelensky? He appears to be a man of many talents, you can never know...

Or maybe the Western countries should realize that they might be wrong this time if the Court or FIFA says that Russia can't be banned legally. Just because Russia broke international law and invaded a country, it doesn't mean that Western countries can now be free to break rules elsewhere. Play by the rules, beat the Russians on the field instead of fundamentally breaking the world of sports.

Great fucking idea, let's abolish the one institution that everyone recognizes as a legitimate neutral court for the world of sports, that will surely solve everything...

You can post the song if you want to, and this is true for everyone who wants to participate and have already selected a song. In the case of a postponement I won't temporarily close the selection and registration period, I will just delay the deadline and all the other dates. Which means that this will simply be one very long selection period if the users vote in favor of a postponement, you may want to wait a month just in case you find a better song (but jurors can change their submitted song until the deadline).

Maybe, but people get tired of wars and revolutions very quickly. I doubt that we will see anything on the level of Maidan if Russia wins this war, many will prefer to live in peace than to fight in a seemingly futile revolution for God knows how many years.

The negotiation is kinda pointless at this point, Russia wants the current leadership gone or at least to prosecute a couple of Ukrainian leaders for crime against Russians, plus they want to dismantle Ukrainian military and ensure that Ukraine stays out of NATO and the EU. Zelensky will never sign that treaty. The only way there will be peace if the Russians capture Zelensky and put a pro-Russian Ukrainian in charge.

Click "Show Vote Options" on the poll, I think you can change the votes that way.

Well... I actually forgot about that. But that was a ban due to the UN Security Council agreeing on that Yugoslavia should be banned from sport events. Obviously the UN SC won't be able to ban Russia because Russia and China will be against it. Russia already made it clear that they will block the Security Council: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/02/1112802

Is there any legal way to ban Russia? I mean, FIFA can't just say "we don't want you to be there", that's not how this works. As far as I know there isn't any rule that a country can be banned because it's part of an ongoing military conflict. The only way to ban Russia is to prove that their federation broke some rules, which is probably not the case. People need to realize that the system is build on the mutual understanding that you can't force countries out of sport events just because you don't like what they did outside of the world of sports, you need something more concrete than that. If we cross this bridge we will soon enter an era of sports where the Olympic boycotts of the 80s will happen again.

It doesn't matter what's right or wrong, there's literally no precedent for a Russian DSQ since the two World Wars. CAS will rule in favor of Russia even if FIFA tries to drop them. Personally I think the decision from Poland and Sweden to forfeit their matches is foolish. They are throwing their chance away to qualify for the World Cup and for what? Take a hint from us: we played against the Soviet Union in 1956 at the Olympic Games, we didn't forfeit our matches. And the water polo match that we won against them is far more legendary than what a forfeit match would have been.

I have set up a multiple choice poll to decide what to do with the contest. You can pick all the options in the polls that you find preferable. For example I picked literally all the options because I am fine with whatever you decide. The poll will close on March 5th. @konig@Federer91@intoronto@Vic Liu@dcro@Hipooo@Agger@Wumo@Benolympique@Bohemia@catgamer@Cinnamon Bun@Quasit@maestro@Makedonas@Yannakis@Fly_like_a_don@OlympicIRL@Dnl@Gianlu33@Henry_Leon@Pablita@SteveParker@Werloc@Glen@mrv86@heywoodu@Wanderer@rybak@kungshamra71@IoNuTzZ@NikolaB@hckošice@justony@Cobi@Belle@amen09@dezbee2008@Olympian1010

In light of an ongoing war... I have waited a few days to think about if I want to continue hosting this TISC now that there's a war in one of our neighboring countries. I have decided that if Eurovision can move on and have a show, I can do the same thing if our users still want to have a contest. The choice is in your hands now, if the majority of users want either cancellation or postponement, I won't be against it. And even if the majority of users want this event to happen, individual jury members are free to withdraw as always. The registration and selection deadline is still more than two weeks away so you got time to think about it.

In fact the most Western part of Ukraine (Zakarpattia) was Hungarian territory for 1000 years. I have already seen some crazy revisionists who think that this our opportunity to take some our lost land back. Imagine being so crazy that you think Putin would give land to a NATO state, or to think that Hungary would gain anything with Zakarpattia.

I mean, personally I do understand this. I have said in 2014 that if Ukraine will continue to go down this path towards the West there will be Russian tanks in Kyiv. I am only surprised about that it took 8 years to reach this point because it seemed so inevitable that one way or another Russia will put a puppet in charge of Ukraine, either via a civil war or an invasion. They will never let Ukraine go, or at least not until they will be too powerless to stop them, just like how they didn't let us go in 1956 and we had to wait decades. And I know it well that there weren't any good intentions from the West, it's all an endless fight for power, they just hide behind the buzzwords of "democracy" and "freedom" to pretend that they are morally superior. I have no doubts about that US will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this war, this was always a win-win situation for them where they either gain a very valuable NATO ally or they profit from yet another proxy war.

For us it's not that simple. Orbán is saying that he wants peace and the trade with Russia to continue because that's exactly what his voters want to hear one month before the Hungarian elections. The opposition went full anti-Russian yesterday like most Western politicians and I think they might lose the Hungarian election because of it. There's also a very clear pro-Russia sentiment on social media from conservatives, many Hungarians blame the Americans and NATO for this conflict.

Is it just me or does the scale of the invasion seem very small? I mean, for most of the day I just thought that we aren't getting information on what's happening, but maybe not much of actual significance happened besides the bombing? Either the Russian invasion is somehow failing or Putin wasn't lying when he called it a "special military operation" and this isn't a full scale invasion for now.

There's absolutely no way they would let Putin take the Baltic states, that would be the end of both NATO and EU. The reason why this is happening to Ukraine because they were alone in this as a "neutral" state, without any real allies. NATO exists because it guarantees the safety of all members, if that gets thrown under the bus, you might as well start learning Chinese and Russian.