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Eurovision 2022 Winners Head Back to Fight on Ukraine’s Front Lines

Kalush Orchestra lead singer Oleg Psiuk traveled back Sunday to rejoin the fight against Russia.

Less than 12 hours after Kalush Orchestra won the Eurovision 2022 song contest, pink-hatted lead singer Oleg Psiuk headed back to Ukraine to fight. The group, which won the popular contest with a song about Psiuk’s mother, which had become an anthem to the motherland under attack, had to get special permission to leave Ukraine because men their age are prohibited from leaving the country. “Our culture is under attack. We wanted to present our music to the world last night,” Psiuk told reporters in Turin, Italy, before leaving. “I wrote the Eurovision song for my mum way before the war—but afterwards, it started taking a different meaning for different people.” Psiuk runs a volunteer organization on the front lines that helps war refugees escape. As winners of the contest, Ukraine will host Eurovision in 2023, which President Zelensky said they would do in a “rebuilt Mariupol.”