Ukraine struggle latest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

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

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

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 probability instead.

Wearing conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy however repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine just isn't a real nation - however 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 more and more confident in itself.

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

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