Ukrainian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, Kalush Orchestra, have joined the war effort against the Russian invaders.
The members of the folk rap group, including founder Oleh Psiuk and other members Ihor Didenchuk, and MC Kilimmen, were pictured holding guns as they prepared to defend their country.
Singer Psiuk said that the song he wrote for the ESC, called Stefania, is being played all over the country.
"This song which we have created, it's the anthem for Ukraine and everybody is singing it,” he said.
“Originally, the song was dedicated to my mother, and now it's the song for all mothers."
Russia has been banned from this year’s competition in Turin, held in mid-May, with the European Broadcasting Union saying that allowing the country to enter would "bring the competition into disrepute".
It remains to be seen whether Kalush Orchestra will be in a position to take part.
Speaking from his hometown of Kalush, in the west of the country, Psiuk called on the West to send a stronger international response towards Russia.
He said: “I think that the aggressor country must be banned from everywhere, from all the possible parts of the economy and politics because the people from their country don't realise that their country is aggressive and the aggressor for all the world, not only for Ukraine."
He told Sky News he would be doing his bit. "My day-to-day life has changed. Now I've been working with a volunteer team. We are helping people to go far away from Ukraine, to find food for those who need it.”
He added: “My girlfriend today was making the Molotov cocktails, and it was the first time she was doing something like that. It's very scary for all of us."
The ESC was held in the Ukranian capital Kyiv in 2017, after singer Jamala triumphed the previous year in Stockholm, Sweden.
She won with the song 1944, with lyrics about the deportation of more than 200,000 Crimean Tatars by former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
At the time, the entire ethnic group were accused of being Nazi sympathisers, but the deportations, in which up to half of those travelling died, have since been referred to as “attempted genocide”.
