Ukraine warfare latest: Russians pushed again far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is unquestionably essentially the most political in a long time.

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

But this year’s occasion is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can represent Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s unique selection.

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 folk rap group from Western Ukraine, acquired their likelihood as an alternative.

Dressed in conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s long but repressed musical traditions, they are 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 is more and more confident in itself.

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

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