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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year's Eurovision is surely 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 around the remainder of the continent.

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

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

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

Kalush Orchestra, a folk rap group from Western Ukraine, received their chance as a substitute.

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 is not an actual nation - however merely a "little Russia", a region 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 assured in itself.

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

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