Ukraine struggle newest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is surely the most political in a very long time.

Russia has been banned. Ukraine is the runaway favourite to win, buoyed by a general sense of solidarity round the rest of the continent.

However this year’s occasion is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will represent Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s original selection.

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, bought their probability as a substitute.

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

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they are going to be representing a nation that is more and more assured in itself.

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

A battle predicated on the concept that this nation had no nationwide id, no foundational myths, no nationwide heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine more with every passing day.