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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is definitely essentially the most political in a long time.

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

However this 12 months’s occasion is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will represent Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s authentic 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 folks rap group from Western Ukraine, acquired their probability instead.

Wearing traditional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy but 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 area that wants reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they will be representing a nation that is more and more confident in itself.

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

A conflict predicated on the idea that this country had no national id, no foundational myths, no nationwide heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine extra with each passing day.