Ukraine has never been one to shy away from voting conspiracies and allegations of corruption. And the 2017 season isn’t one to disappoint.
Two songs in the Online Wildcard selection: Kuznetsov “Deep Shivers” and Aghiazma “Zombie Dogs” have had their lead in the online voting reset to Zero. The security service of STB, which helps national broadcaster NTU with the organisation of the national final for Eurovision, has stated that “the leaders had received their “likes” by means of fraud”, with contestants having hacked into the STB website which has put the rest of the websites of StarLightMedia at risk now.
“On Tuesday, 8 November, at 16:00 our technical admins have discovered a large number of requests to the Eurovision database of the site, and therefore they have decided to suspend the vote. All requests were coming from the robots instead of real people”, stated representatives of the technical support. The editor in chief of the STB website, Yulia Petroskaya has condemned the actions and added the comment “It is very frustrating to know that some participants decided to reach success by the means of cheating. It’s amazing that people who did it were certain that such actions can go unnoticed. Technical capabilities of StarLightMedia holding websites allow us to monitor all fraud attempts. Therefore, we ask all of our users and participants of various competitions, including the Eurovision, not to resort to dishonest methods of competing”.
As of 4th November the two songs had a massive lead over the other songs so far; “Deep Shivers” with 83102 votes and “Zombie Dogs” with 41634 votes. STB have decided to cancel all the votes of these two songs that have been found to have cheated.
The leader so far, now, is Denis Povaliy with his song “Written On Your Heart” with 10211 votes which is still over 8000 votes than 2nd place, which is Ksenia Popova with “Let It Fall” with 1865 votes. Since the song “Deep Shivers” by Kuznetov has their votes reduced to 0, it has resurged in the votes, and now sits once again in 2nd place so far. The song “Zombie Dogs” by Aghiazma has however, failed to recreate their votes since the reduction, sitting with only 13 votes.
Top 5 so far (numbers correct as of 13/11/2016 11:35 CET
- Denis Povaliy “Written On Your Heart” – 10222
- Kuznetov “Deep Shivers” – 5286
- Ksenia Popova “Let It Fall” – 1870
- One Light Inside “Stay” – 1798
- Legenda Folium “My Space” – 1681
You can vote for the songs at http://eurovision.stb.ua/ru/ and if you are outside Ukraine, you can listen to the songs here www.youtube.com.
Let us know your comments on the latest drama to hit Ukraine, and your comments on the songs. Who would you like to win the wildcard vote?