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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year's Eurovision is surely the most political in a 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 symbolize Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s authentic 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 folks rap group from Western Ukraine, got their probability instead.

Wearing conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy but repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine just isn't a real nation - but 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 assured in itself.

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

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