This vacuum has left enthusiastic teenage music fans like Maria Chkhan with no alternative but to turn to the one source of unfettered news and entertainment embraced by millennials the world over: the internet.
"I am even thinking of putting the Eurovision logo on my computer desktop," the 18-year-old aspiring jazz singer told AFP from the Russian-backed separatists' de facto capital city of Donetsk.
"But I doubt the teachers would take to it kindly," she added with a giggle.
More than 200 million people are expected to watch the annual extravaganza pitting 42 nations in a contest in which glamour and a touch of the absurd create a spectacle embraced by generations of Europeans.
But this year's competition has been partially overshadowed by a political row between Moscow and Kiev over Kiev's refusal to let Russian contestant Julia Samoilova take part.
The charismatic wheelchair-bound singer was barred for performing on Ukraine's Crimea peninsula a year after it was annexed by Russia in 2014.
Russia retaliated by refusing to broadcast Eurovision -- and created its underground cult following in Ukraine's war zone in the process.
