Ukraine’s Eurovision entrant has been dropped from the song-contest in a row related to the ongoing conflict with Russia.
Anna Korsun, 27, known as Maruv, won the right to appear in this year’s competition three days ago.
However, Ukraine’s national broadcaster ditched the singer after she refused to sign a contract that would have reduced her ties to Russia.
The channel, UA Suspilne Movlennya, gave Ms Korsun 48 hours to cancel a planned appearance in St Petersburg and transfer the rights to the song she was due to perform at Eurovision from a Russian music label.
‘Siren Song’, which has been watched 6.8 million times on Youtube, is currently owned by Warner Music Russia.
Ms Korsun said that the terms of the contract would have made her a mouthpiece for Ukrainian propaganda.
She claims she was less concerned by the cancellation of the concerts in Russia than clauses forbidding her from improvising on stage or talking to journalists without the broadcaster’s prior permission.
Breaches of contract would have incurred fines and compelled her to pay the cost of her own performances at Eurovision, due to be held in Tel Aviv in May.
In a statement posted on her Facebook account, Maruv said: "I am a citizen of Ukraine, pay taxes and sincerely love Ukraine. But I am not ready to come up with slogans, turning my stay at the competition into a promotion of our politicians. I am a musician, not a blunt weapon in the political arena."
Ms Korsun is from a Russian-speaking region in southeastern Ukraine, Pavlohrad, where a large Russian diaspora has felt isolated from mainstream society since the clashes with Russia began five years ago.
This is not the first time the Eurovision Song Contest, which strives for political neutrality, has become tangled up in the conflict.
Ukraine hosted the competition in 2017 and barred Russia’s representative from entry.
Ukraine’s winning song from the year before was about the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars, and was viewed as a commentary on Russia’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014