Ukraine conflict latest: Russians pushed again far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year's Eurovision is definitely essentially the most political in a long time.

Russia has been banned. Ukraine is the runaway favorite to win, buoyed by a normal sense of solidarity around the rest of the continent.

But this 12 months’s event is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can symbolize Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s authentic selection.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former reality show contestant.

But when it was alleged she had visited occupied Crimea, she was dropped amid public outcry.

Kalush Orchestra, a people rap group from Western Ukraine, obtained their chance instead.

Dressed in conventional outfits and drawing on the nation’s long however repressed musical traditions, they are an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is not an actual country - but merely a "little Russia", a area that needs reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they are going to be representing a nation that's increasingly confident in itself.

And therein lies the irony, some would say strategic blunder, on the coronary heart of president Putin’s invasion.

A war predicated on the concept that this nation had no national identity, no foundational myths, no national heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine extra with every passing day.