Ukraine conflict latest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

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

However this 12 months’s occasion is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which is able to characterize Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s authentic selection.

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

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

Kalush Orchestra, a people rap group from Western Ukraine, received their likelihood as an alternative.

Wearing conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s long however repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine isn't a real country - but 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 is 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 conflict predicated on the concept that this nation had no national identification, no foundational myths, no nationwide heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine more with every passing day.