Ukraine conflict newest: Russians pushed again far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is surely 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 rest of the continent.

However this yr’s occasion is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will characterize Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s unique selection.

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

However when it was alleged she had visited occupied Crimea, she was dropped amid public outcry.

Kalush Orchestra, a people rap group from Western Ukraine, bought their chance instead.

Dressed in conventional outfits and drawing on the nation’s long however repressed musical traditions, they are an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is just not an actual country - however 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'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 warfare 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 more with every passing day.