Country Russia Selection date(s) 7 March 2006 Selected song "Never Let You Go" | Selection process Internal selection Selected entrant Dima Bilan | |
Semi-final result Qualified (3rd, 217 points) | ||
Russia participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens, Greece. The Russian entry was selected internally by the Russian broadcaster Channel One Russia (C1R). Dima Bilan represented Russia with the song "Never Let You Go", which qualified from the semi-final and placed 2nd in the final, scoring 248 points.
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Internal selection
On 26 January 2006, C1R officially announced it would be accepting entries from interested artists and composers until 1 March 2006. C1R aired television advertisements calling for entries that conformed to the official contest rules and that the selection would be internally decided by a professional jury.
Following the 1 March submission deadline, several artists were reported as main contenders in the media. Those artists included Dima Bilan, who submitted two songs: "Never Let You Go" and "Lady Flame", Jasmine with the song "Desperate Foreigner", Varvara with the song "We'll Be There" and Ariana with the song "Don't Go". On 7 March 2006, C1R held a press conference that announced Dima Bilan as the selected representative for Russia. Out of Dima Bilan's submitted entries, the selection panel decided to keep "Never Let You Go" as a backup entry while requesting that Bilan's writing team compose a new song for the contest. Only 10 days were left until the official entry had to be submitted to the European Broadcasting Union and efforts to compose a new entry were eventually dropped and "Never Let You Go" was selected as the Russian entry.
The jury panel that selected the Russian entry included Konstantin Ernst (general manager of C1R), Yuriy Aksyuta (music director of C1R), Ilya Bachurin (MTV Russia), Alexander Polesitskiy, (Europa Plus), Vladimir Matetsky (composer), Viktor Drobysh (composer) and Larisa Dolina (singer).
At Eurovision
Since Russia did not place in the top 10 countries (excluding the Big Four) in the 2005 Contest, Russia was required to compete in the semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 on 18 May 2006. On 21 March 2006, Russia was drawn to perform 13th in the semi-final, following Poland and preceding Turkey.
For the Russian performance, Bilan was joined on stage by two ballerinas and two backing vocalists as well as a hollow white piano where a third ballerina emerged from a rose covered opening later in the performance. Russia qualified from the semi-final, placing 3rd and scoring 217 points. Since Russia was the first national announced as a qualifying country during the semi-final broadcast, Russia took the first available qualifier spot in the final running order. In the final, Russia performed 10th, following Denmark and preceding Macedonia. After the voting concluded, Russia scored 248 points and placed 2nd. Since Russia was among the top 10 countries, excluding the nations that constitute the Big Four, Russia pre-qualified to compete directly in the final of the 2007 Contest.
The semi-final and final were broadcast on Channel One, with commentary by Yuriy Aksyuta and Tatyana Godunova. The voting spokesperson for Russia was Yana Churikova.