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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This yr's Eurovision is unquestionably essentially the most political in a very long time.

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

However this 12 months’s occasion is political for different causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can symbolize Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s original selection.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former actuality present 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, bought their chance as an alternative.

Dressed in traditional outfits and drawing on the nation’s lengthy however repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is just not an actual nation - however merely a "little Russia", a area 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 confident in itself.

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

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