Welcome to the Who Is series for Junior Eurovision 2020. In each article, we will take a closer look at each of the 13 artists competing at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2020 in Warsaw, Poland. First up is Oleksandr Balabanov from Ukraine.
Oleksandr Balabanov was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, and began singing when he was young. At the age of 4, he joined the children’s folk singing group, before moving to the Ukrainian capital at 8 years old. Since the move, he began taking vocal classes.
Oleksandr is the first male singer to represent Ukraine in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest since 2009 when Andranik Alexanyan represented Ukraine on home soil in Kyiv. He won the Ukrainian selection on the jury vote alone receiving 5 out of 8 jurors votes while finishing 4th with the public vote.
He will be singing “Vidkryvay” (Open) at this year’s contest.
Ukraine debuted in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2006 and has competed in the contest ever since. To date Ukraine has only won the competition once. In 2012 Anastasiya Petryk won in Amsterdam with the song “Nebo”, she scored 138 points including eight sets of 12 points. Ukraine has hosted the contest twice, the first time being in 2009 and the second being in 2013 following their victory in Amsterdam.
