Ukraine war newest: Russians pushed again far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is unquestionably probably the most political in a very long time.

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

But this 12 months’s event is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can symbolize Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s unique choice.

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

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

Kalush Orchestra, a people rap group from Western Ukraine, received their likelihood as a substitute.

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 not a real nation - however merely a "little Russia", a area that needs reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they will be representing a nation that's more and more 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 id, no foundational myths, no national heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine extra with every passing day.