Ukraine’s victory at the Eurovision Song Contest brought national pride, joy and artistic prestige to the country amid the devastation of war. Now, it will also help supply drones to the Ukrainian army.
Kalush Orchestra, the Ukrainian band that won Eurovision after sweeping the phone-in popular vote, put its trophy and the pink bucket hat worn by its lead singer during the contest up for auction, and the items netted more than $1.2 million, the band’s spokeswoman said in a statement on Monday.
“We believe that this is only the first victory before our biggest victory over the Russian aggressor,” Oleh Psiuk, the band’s lead singer, said in a Telegram message.
The money is going to the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation, an organization founded by a Ukrainian TV presenter, and will be used to buy three drones that the army can use for surveillance, said Maria Pysarenko, a spokeswoman for the foundation.
The trophy, a handmade glass microphone designed by the Swedish artist Kjell Engman, was auctioned in cryptocurrency, Ms. Pysarenko said.
WhiteBIT, a cryptocurrency exchange platform originally from Ukraine, secured the trophy on Sunday for $900,000 following competing bids in the last minutes of the auction from businessmen from Kalush — the Ukrainian city Mr. Psiuk is from — and a charity fund from Washington.
“It’s a big amount, but we understand that the aim is much bigger,” said Margarita Polupan, a spokeswoman at WhiteBIT, adding that her company had worked to provide and coordinate support for Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
The winner of the bucket hat “with the sweat and tears of Oleh,” as Mr. Prytula described it, was chosen at random in a separate raffle, where each ticket cost 200 Ukrainian hryvnia, or less than $7. More than 30,000 people participated, raising more than $300,000.
Volodymyr Onyshchuk, a Ukrainian IT engineer living in the Czech Republic who is a regular donor to Mr. Prytula’s charity, won the prize. He said in a phone interview that he had bought several tickets because he thought it was “a cool situation,” adding that he planned to take a “picture for Facebook” with the hat before donating it to a museum in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, or in Kalush.
After winning Eurovision, Kalush Orchestra urged its fans to show support by donating to help the Ukrainian army. “Every euro you donate will help save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers!” the band wrote in an Instagram post promoting the auction.
Eurovision’s rules state that it is a “nonpolitical event,” but the competition has never been truly isolated from world politics.
Kalush Orchestra’s winning song, “Stefania,” was written to honor Mr. Psiuk’s mother. While it does not have overtly political lyrics, it has been reinterpreted as a patriotic hymn to Ukraine as a motherland.
After the contest, the band released a music video for “Stefania” that shows wrecked buildings and women soldiers carrying children amid the rubble, in a clear reference to the war. It has been viewed nearly 20 million times.
“If Stefania is now the anthem of our war,” Mr. Psiuk wrote in the video’s caption, “I would like it to become the anthem of our victory.”
John Ismay contributed reporting.
May 31, 2022
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of a spokeswoman at WhiteBIT. She is Margarita Polupan, not Populan.
