Jamala says song won on artistic, not political, grounds:
Ukrainian singer Jamala says she rejects criticism that her song 1944 took top prize at the Eurovision Song Contest for political rather than artistic reasons.
Speaking to the press in Kyiv May 17 she called her win an "absolute, 100 percent victory of the music."
Russian officials have complained on social media and elsewhere that Jamala's song was blatantly political and should have been banned from the Eurovision contest under rules forbidding political content in performances.
Jamala, a 32-year-old Crimean Tatar, won Eurovision on May 15 with a song about the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union during World War II.
Jamala has said previously that her song is also a condemnation of Russia's seizure and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and the repressions that Crimean Tatars have since endured.
Tatars make up about 15 percent of Crimea's nearly 2 million people and have broadly opposed Russia's takeover. (Ukraine's Channel 5 TV)