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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year'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 common sense of solidarity around the remainder of the continent.

But this 12 months’s occasion is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will represent Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s original 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 folk rap group from Western Ukraine, acquired their likelihood as a substitute.

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 shouldn't be an actual country - but merely a "little Russia", a area that wants reintegration.

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

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

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