Ukraine war newest: Russians pushed again 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 favourite to win, buoyed by a basic sense of solidarity round the rest of the continent.

However this 12 months’s occasion is political for other causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can signify Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s original alternative.

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

Wearing traditional 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 just isn't an actual country - however merely a "little Russia", a area that wants 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, on the coronary heart of president Putin’s invasion.

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