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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is definitely essentially 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 round the remainder of the continent.

But this 12 months’s event is political for other causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will signify Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s unique selection.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former reality present 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 probability 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 just isn't an actual nation - 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 more and more confident in itself.

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

A struggle 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 extra with each passing day.