Belarus’ Eurovision broadcaster BTRC has been expelled from the European Broadcasting Union. This rules out a Belarusian participation in Italy 2022 and makes Belarus’ return to the Eurovision Song contest and the Junior Eurovision Song contest extremely unlikely.
Let’s take a look at what Belarus has brought to the Eurovision Song Contest since 2004.
The Belarus entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 was organized by BTRC. It had been originally planned for ONT, another Belarussian broadcaster, to take over after criticism over BTRC’s selection methods. After ONT’s application for the European Broadcasting Union had been rejected, BTRC again selected the Belarusian entry.
BTRC announced that the Belarusian entry for the 2010 contest would be selected through an internal selection and opened a submission period where artists and composers were able to submit their songs. At the closing of the deadline, 41 entries were received of which a jury of experts selected 3+2 with the song Far Away as the Belarussian entry.
Just before the deadline BTRC announced that Far Away had been withdrawn and replaced with the song Butterflies which was written by Maxim Fadeev, Robert Wells and Malka Chaplin.
At the ESC Belarus was one of the ten qualifiers for the Grand Final, placing 9th with 59 points. In the Final Belarus came 24th with 18 points.