Ukraine battle newest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year's Eurovision is definitely probably the most political in a long time.

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

But this 12 months’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 original choice.

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, bought their likelihood as an alternative.

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

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

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

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