Singer LELEKA (Victoria Leleka) shared that after winning the prestigious European award Junge Deutsche Jazzpreis she received an offer of cooperation from a famous music label. Representatives of the company praised the artist’s creativity and even proposed a development strategy, but received a refusal from her. As the celebrity explained, she categorically did not want to follow the terms of the contract, according to which she had to stop singing in her native language. The label wanted LELEKA to perform Ukrainian folk songs in English, which immediately associated her with Russian narratives. The performer spoke about the dirty demands of the European label in the project “Zi svoimi in essence”.

" They told me that we would do such and such a strategy, but we consulted with our marketing part, and they said that after all, we cannot implement this in the Ukrainian language, in the Chinese or in the French market. Therefore, we have a condition: we take you, you are incredible, but you will sing Ukrainian folk songs in English,” the singer recalled.

LELEKA did not hide the fact that she did not expect to hear such a demand from a European label. The artist was convinced that abroad they would support the versatility of creativity, but everything turned out to be the opposite.

" But I live in different times. I couldn’t imagine that I could encounter such a problem not on the Ukrainian market, where Russian culture had a very big influence, but abroad, where supposedly everyone is for this multi-colored. I definitely said: “Sorry, I’m a Ukrainian singer, I represent Ukrainian culture.”. I don’t want to contribute to English culture or German culture,” said the artist.

Note that for 11 years LELEKA lived in Germany. There she received a musical education at the Dresden Higher School of Music named after Carl-Maria von Weber, and also popularized Ukrainian music through her creativity and held charity concerts to help the Motherland. The performer has been living in Kyiv for the last five months and honestly admits that she doesn’t know when she will return to Berlin, because after the breakup with her chosen one, she has nowhere to live there.

However, despite the long period of career development abroad, Ukrainians liked the work of LELEKA. She became the winner of the National selection, so she will represent our country on the Eurovision 2026 stage with the track Ridnym.