 In 1996, Russia's entry was Andrey Kosinsky with the song "Me is me", but on the eve of competition (for the second time in their history), he scored an insufficient number of points in a special qualifying round and therefore missed the final.In 1998, because Russia did not participate in the contest (due to lower average scores in participating in previous competitions), Russia refused to broadcast the competition and the European Broadcasting Union in return forbade the country to participate the following year.According to unconfirmed information, Russia was required to submit Tatyana Ovsiyenko with the song "My Sun".