Ukraine battle latest: Russians pushed again far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

Russia has been banned. Ukraine is the runaway favorite to win, buoyed by a common sense of solidarity round the remainder of the continent.

But this 12 months’s occasion is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which is able to characterize Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s authentic alternative.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former actuality present contestant.

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

Kalush Orchestra, a people rap group from Western Ukraine, bought their chance as an alternative.

Dressed in conventional outfits and drawing on the nation’s long however repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is just not a real nation - but 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 is more and more confident in itself.

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

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