Ukraine warfare newest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is definitely 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 around the remainder of the continent.

However this 12 months’s event is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will signify Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s unique alternative.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former reality show 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, got their probability instead.

Dressed in conventional 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 will not be a real country - however merely a "little Russia", a region that wants 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 idea that this nation had no nationwide identification, no foundational myths, no nationwide heroes, no will to withstand, is what's uniting Ukraine more with every passing day.