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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This yr's Eurovision is surely the most political in a very 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 yr’s event is political for other causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can signify Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s unique choice.

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, acquired their chance as an alternative.

Wearing traditional 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 will not be a real 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's more and more confident in itself.

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

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