Ukraine war latest: Russians pushed again far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is surely 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 round the remainder of the continent.

However this yr’s occasion is political for different causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can characterize Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s original alternative.

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

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

Kalush Orchestra, a folks rap group from Western Ukraine, received their chance as a substitute.

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

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

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

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