Ukraine war newest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This yr's Eurovision is definitely probably the most political in a very long time.

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

However this 12 months’s event is political for different causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can characterize Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s original choice.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former reality show 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, got their chance as an alternative.

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

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

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

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