Ukraine warfare latest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This yr's Eurovision is surely 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 round the rest of the continent.

However this year’s event is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which is able to characterize Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s authentic alternative.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former actuality show contestant.

But 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 probability as an alternative.

Wearing traditional 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 will not be an actual country - however merely a "little Russia", a area that needs reintegration.

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

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

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