Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009

The Ukrainian national final took place in Kyiv and consisted of a semi-final held on 8 February 2009 and a final on 8 March 2009.

The selection of the competing entries for the national final and ultimately the Ukrainian Eurovision entry took place over three stages. In the first stage, artists and songwriters had the opportunity to apply for the competition. Thirty-one acts were selected and announced on 28 January 2009.[3] The second stage originally consisted of a non-televised semi-final on 1 February 2009 where fifteen acts were to be selected to advance to the final on 22 February 2009 based on the votes from an expert jury.[4][5] This was later changed on 20 January 2009, where it was announced that televised semi-finals were to take place at the Sports Palace on 7 and 8 February 2009 with ten acts competing in each show.[6] However, this was yet again changed on 21 January 2009, where it was announced that only one semi-final will be held at the NTU studios on 8 February 2009.[7][8] Fifteen acts were selected to advance from the semi-final based on the votes from an expert jury. The third stage was the final, which took place at the Ukraina Hall on 8 March 2009 and featured the fifteen acts that qualified from the semi-final vying to represent Ukraine in Moscow. The winner was selected via the 50/50 combination of votes from a public televote and an expert jury. Both the public televote and the expert jury assigned scores ranging from 1 (lowest) to 15 (highest) and the entry that had the highest number of points following the combination of these scores was declared the winner.

Artists and composers had the opportunity to submit their entries between 3 November 2008 and 16 January 2009.[9] A five-member selection panel consisting of Vasyl Ilashchuk (president of NTU), Roman Nedzelskiy (first vice president of NTU), Andriy Chernyuk (vice president of NTU), Yevgeniy Kalenskyi (vice president of NTU), Sergiy Lapchenko (chief editor of NTU's entertainment and music department) and Oleg Pylypchuk (director of NTU's entertainment and music department) reviewed 63 received submissions and selected thirty-one entries to compete in the national final.[9] On 28 January 2009, the thirty-one selected competing acts were announced.[3]

The semi-final was filmed on 8 February 2009 and aired on 21 February 2009, hosted by Timur Miroshnychenko.[10] The top fifteen entries following the votes from an expert jury advanced to the final of the competition, while the remaining sixteen entries were eliminated. The jury panel consisted of Vasyl Ilashchuk (president of NTU), Roman Nedzelskiy (first vice president of NTU), Oleksandr Ponomaryov (singer, represented Ukraine in 2003), Sergiy Kuzin (director of Russian Radio Ukraine), Andriy Eryomin (choreographer), Vladimir Bebeshko (composer) and Taras Petrynenko (composer and singer).[9]

The final took place on 8 March 2009, hosted by Maria Orlova and Timur Miroshnychenko.[11][12] NikitA announced their withdrawal from the competition before the final. The fourteen entries that qualified from the semi-final competed. The winner, "Be My Valentine" performed by Svetlana Loboda, was selected through the combination of votes from a public televote and an expert jury. Ties were decided in favour of the entries that received higher scores from the jury.[1][2] The jury panel consisted of Vasyl Ilashchuk (president of NTU), Roman Nedzelskiy (first vice president of NTU), Yevgeniy Kalenskyi (vice president of NTU), Oleksandr Ponomaryov (singer, represented Ukraine in 2003), Sergiy Kuzin (director of Russian Radio Ukraine), Vladimir Bebeshko (composer) and Taras Petrynenko (composer and singer).

After the semi-final, it was reported that Anastasia Prikhodko and her manager claimed that neither the NTU nor the national jury had used trustworthy methods to choose the contestants for the final. Prikhodko's interpretation of the rules was that in the semi-final, she had been entitled to perform something different from their Eurovision entry song. In fact, Paragraph 4.3 of the Rules of Eurovision Song Competition issued by the NCTU on 31 October 2008 stated literally: "On 8 February 2009 on the improvised stage set in the NTU studios, the 30 semi-finalists perform their competition songs live."[13] On the grounds of the paragraph, the jury disqualified Prikhodko for performing a song from her repertoire of the times of the Star Factory TV show called "Vsyo dlya tebya".[14] Prikhodko would later enter the Russian national final on 7 March 2009, winning with "Mamo" and represented Russia at the 2009 contest.[15][16]

After winning the national final, "Be My Valentine" was retitled as "Be My Valentine! (Anti-Crisis Girl)" and its promotional video was released, which will be shown around Europe before the contest.[17] Svetlana performed with a number of other entries in the 2009 contest at two international events: on 17 April the Ukrainian entry performed at the UKEurovision Preview Party at the Scala in London;[18] she also performed on 18 April at the Eurovision Promo Concert in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, along with entries from 22 other countries.[19][20]