Ukraine will be represented at this year's Eurovision song contest by a Crimean Tatar, who sings about her family's deportation by Stalin.

Jamala was picked to represent the country with her song about the forced migration of hundreds of thousands of people from her Black Sea homeland, two years after Russia annexed the territory.

The 32-year-old won the domestic competition on Sunday with her rendition of her song, 1944.

The singer and one of the judges on the panel struggled to hold back tears as they talked about Russia's annexation of Crimea 70 years later.

Russia also participates in Eurovision, and Jamala's presence at this year's final in Stockholm in May could add a political edge to a competition better known as an annual celebration of kitsch.

While her choice of subject might seem unusual, Jamala said that telling her family's story would help prevent the mistakes of the past being repeated.

"The main message is to remember and to know this story. When we know, we prevent," she told Reuters in an earlier interview at a music studio in Kiev.

During World War II, Tatars like Jamala's relatives were accused of being Nazi collaborators, thrown out of their homes by Red Army soldiers and transported to Central Asia in freight trucks without food, water or fresh air.

Last year, Ukraine's parliament approved a resolution that said the deportations were tantamount to genocide.

The majority of Tatars, a Muslim people indigenous to Crimea who today number about 300,000 in the region's population of two million, opposed the Russian takeover and fear being treated as second-class citizens by the Russian majority.