LONDON - Tension has been rising between Russia and neighboring Azerbaijan since the weekend over an alleged vote-rigging scandal whose reverberations are being felt across Europe.
Even Sergey V. Lavrov, the formidable Russian foreign minister, has stepped in, threatening that an “outrageous action†committed in Baku will not go unanswered. The Azerbaijani authorities have offered a full-scale fraud investigation.
The origin of the diplomatic spat involving Moscow and the former Soviet satellite is the annual festival of kitsch and glamour known as the Eurovision Song Contest.
Russia claims its entry at the finals of the televised songfest in Malmö, Sweden last Saturday was pushed into a desultory fifth place as a consequence of vote-stealing in Azerbaijan.
Results in the contest, watched by an estimated 125 million viewers across Europe, are determined by a mix of votes from official national juries in participating states and those phoned in by the public.
The result announced from Azerbaijan on Saturday awarded zero points to the Russian entrant, Dina Garipova, rather than the 10 points indicated by data from cellphone operators.
It has prompted allegations of both jury-rigging and illicit “power-voting†via text and telephone.
“We can't be happy with the fact that 10 points were stolen from our participant,†Mr. Lavrov warned on Tuesday.
“We will discuss joint measures to ensure that this outrageous action will not go unanswered,†he said after talks in Moscow with Elmar Mammadyarov, his Azerbaijani counterpart.
The European Broadcasting Union, the pan-national authority that organizes the contest, is so far standing by Saturday's independently audited results.
However, Eurovision officials have tried to calm the troubled waters by promising to look into the accusations on behalf of millions of viewers and the contestants, “who have put heart and soul into their performances.â€
Camil Guliyev, the head of Azerbaijan's state broadcaster, said he hoped the incident “possibly initiated by certain interest groups, will not cast a shadow over the brotherly relations of the Russian and Azerbaijani peoples.â€
Among evidence to be examined is an undercover video, shot hours before the final and said to show how two individuals approached people to cast large numbers of votes in favor of one particular entry.
Jon Ola Sand, the contest's executive supervisor, emphasized that no link had been established between the individuals in question and Azerbaijani officials.
This year's diplomatic spillover was the latest example of politics intruding into the contest, challenging Mr. Sand's assurance that “the Song Contest's apolitical spirit is a cornerstone of its enduring success.â€
As Rendezvous reported a year ago, when Azerbaijan hosted the finals, local political activists took advantage of the presence of more than 1,000 visiting journalists to highlight corruption and rights abuses by the regime of President Ilhem Aliyev.
An Irish academic study in 2010 noted that, “even though the contest professes itself to be apolitical…the political alliances and divisions that mark Europe often become too readily evident with the contest.â€
The paper by Adrian Kavanagh of National University found that countries tended to vote for their friends and not for their enemies, regardless of the quality of the songs.
In recent years, the annual lineup has been bolstered by entrants from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where the contest is taken more seriously than in some of the Western European states where it has been running since 1956.
In countries like Britain, a five-time winner, it is now widely regarded as a once-a-year celebration of televised kitsch, more watchable for its spangles and sparkle that for its instantly forgettable songs.
Eastern Europe has dominated the winner's podium in the past decade, although Saturday's crown went to Emmelie de Forest of Denmark, with “Only Teardrops.†Azerbaijan came in second.
But, even in Western Europe, the contest maintains its ability to provoke a political reaction.
In Germany this week, there was speculation that the country's miserable 21st place at Malmö was Europe's payback for Chancellor Angela Merkel's tough stance on the euro zone financial crisis.
