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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

Russia has been banned. Ukraine is the runaway favorite to win, buoyed by a basic sense of solidarity round the remainder 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 country’s authentic selection.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former reality show contestant.

But 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 chance instead.

Wearing traditional outfits and drawing on the nation’s lengthy but repressed musical traditions, they are an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is not a real 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 is 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 country had no national id, no foundational myths, no national heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine extra with every passing day.