Ziferblat’s “Bird of Pray” won Ukraine’s Vidbir 2025 national final in Kyiv on February 8, 2025. Three months later it finished ninth in the Eurovision Song Contest final in Basel, with 218 points.
The band is Danylo Leshchynskyi, Valentyn Leshchynskyi and Fedir Khodakov, and all three wrote the song. Valentyn started it in June 2024 with an acoustic guitar, composed the music first, then wrote lyrics around the image of a bird coming to him. The group said it “wanted to do something new” and wanted to show a large audience how well it knows Ukrainian traditional music.
The lyrics switch between Ukrainian and English. They describe Ukrainians split apart by Russia’s invasion, and the bird stands for the fragile link between them. That is why the title reads “Pray” and not “Prey”.
How the entry was chosen
The public broadcaster Suspilne ran the selection. Artists could apply from September 17 to November 10, 2024. Anyone who had performed at events in Russia or entered Crimea illegally since March 15, 2014 was barred, and so were songs in Russian.
Tina Karol, who represented Ukraine in 2006, served as music producer for the competition and led the review of 374 submissions. Twenty acts were longlisted, with names announced on December 11. After auditions, nine were shortlisted, and an extra act came in through an online vote. Ziferblat were confirmed among the ten finalists on December 20.
A three-person expert jury, chosen by a public vote in the Diia app, judged the final alongside the audience. Jamala, Serhiy Tanchynets and Kateryna Pavlenko took the seats after 442,374 votes were cast.
On stage in Basel
Ukraine was drawn into the first semi-final on May 13, 2025, and performed fifth. The staging was retro in style: soft pink light, and a pair of giant wings that unfurled at the climax. Ziferblat won the semi-final outright, first among 15 countries with 137 points, and the top ten advanced.
In the final on May 17, Ukraine went on seventh, after Spain’s Melody and before Remember Monday of the United Kingdom. The 218 points split into 60 from the juries, good for 14th, and 158 from viewers, good for sixth. Czechia, Israel and Poland each gave the televote’s top mark of 12.
Critics were divided. Mark Savage of the BBC said the song extended Ukraine’s “astonishing run in high-quality entries.” Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph called it “another surprisingly upbeat warzone anthem.” Jon O’Brien of Vulture wrote that its 1970s glam rock and banshee wails “were unlikely to connect emotionally.”
