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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year's Eurovision is surely the most political in a 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.

But this 12 months’s occasion is political for different causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will signify Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s original selection.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former actuality 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, received their likelihood instead.

Wearing 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 will not be 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'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 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.