‘Insensitive’: Ukraine beauty queen slams pageant for making her share room with Russian rival

Organisers of the Miss Grand International 2022 have paired the Russian and Ukrainian participants as roommates for the October 25 event in Indonesia

Netizens have also slammed pageant organisers for exploiting the war in Ukraine by housing the two representatives in the same room

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Olga Vasyliv was on her way to Indonesia to take part in Miss Grand International 2022 when she found out the news. Photo: Instagram

Published: 8:45pm, 5 Oct 2022

An Asian beauty pageant is under fire for being “politically insensitive” after its Thailand-based organisers assigned a Ukrainian beauty queen to share a room with her Russian rival for a showpiece event.

Olga Vasyliv was on her way to Indonesia to take part in the Miss Grand International 2022 contest when she found out the news.

In an Instagram post, Vasyliv said her main goal at the competition was to “tell the world about the Ukrainian spirit, the country’s beauty and what we are enduring right now”.

But her enthusiasm turned into “feelings of rage and pain” after she read the letter from the organisers telling her to share a room with Ekaterina Astashenkova.

Russian model Ekaterina Astashenkova has been assigned as roommate to Ukraine’s representative Olga Vasyliv. More than 70 contestants have arrived in Indonesia to participate in this year’s final, which will be held on October 25 at a convention centre south of Jakarta. Photo: Instagram

“My assigned roommate is going to be a competitor from Russia – a terrorist country that has lost all law and order,” Vasyliv wrote on Instagram.

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