THIS YEAR'S ENTRY

 SELECTION
In the biggest national final of the year, twenty five songs competed in the three hour long Russian selection which was held on March 7th at the Vladimir Nazarov Theatre in Moscow and hosted by Oxana Fyodorova and Dmitry Guberniev. The winner was chosen by a five person jury of musical experts and public televoting.

 BIOGRAPHY
This year Russia picked an artist who became famous over night on YouTube to represent them. It's Peter Nalitch with Yura Kostenko, Sergey Sokolov, Kostya Shvetsov, Dima Simonov and Denis Marinkin who will take the stage in Oslo with a new style of music, called "Jolly Babury".

Peter Nalitch has become famous after he published a music video on YouTube which he made himself for the song "Guitar". In about a month after he did it, 70,000 persons had already watched it. The Russian users of LiveJournal were sending each other the link to the song and the number of views was increasing by thousand every day. That brought him into fame all over Russia.

After his first very popular concert, Peter gathered a grouped of musicians with whom he gave two more concerts in the winter of 2008 and took the name MKPN.

In the following summer they went to support the Russian sport teams at the UEFA European Cup and the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing. That was followed by releasing an album and also the DVD of their Moscow concerts, making them established artists.

 REACTION
"Lost An Forgotten" was something of a shock winner of the Russian selection and international reaction to the song was generally a mixture of surprise and mild hostility. Since being chosen, Peter Nalitch has done little international promotion for his Eurovision.

 With a 100% qualification record, Russia is still among the bookmakers favourites to make the final in Oslo, but at 200/1 to win, it is the most lowly ranked of any Russian entry, since they made their debut in 1994. Internet polls also have also been unenthusiastic, with almost of rankings having Russian in the bottom ten positions of the 39 competing countries.

 "Guitar" the song that made Peter Nalitch famous.

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