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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year's Eurovision is unquestionably essentially the most political in a very long time.

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

But this yr’s event is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which is able to signify 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 folk rap group from Western Ukraine, acquired their likelihood instead.

Wearing conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy but repressed musical traditions, they are an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is not a real country - but merely a "little Russia", a region that needs reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they will be representing a nation that is increasingly confident in itself.

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

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