Quote Originally Posted by maryo View Post
As a side note, the use of the word "defeated" is often used in sports or competition here where I live: for example if Detroit's baseball team wins the a baseball competition and was competing against the Lansing team I would think nothing of reading the sentence "Detroit defeats Lansing in the ... series." The term is not always used in a military way of an actual defeat of an enemy: two teams competed with each other, one lost and one won because one team 'defeated' the other, it's a victory! It's a subtle difference but this is how some writers would use the word 'defeat' in this case. The word 'defeat' is more colorful, more expressive than writing "Hey, Detroit won."
When two commands get together and compete the logical outcome is that one command might defeat the other one.
Eurovision had 28 contestants from different countries not 2 but somehow only Russia gets defeated. It's simply logical to conclude that it was Russia vs the rest of contestants, according to the author. Now the bigger question is, should Russians feel threatened by those 27 countries (let's not forget all the boos Polina has got) and are those countries hostile toward Russia? That's the message that the Guardian wanted to deliver to the readers and that's no more than propaganda.