Ukraine warfare latest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This yr's Eurovision is surely probably the most political in a very long time.

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

However this 12 months’s event is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can signify Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s authentic alternative.

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

Dressed in traditional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy however repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine will not be a real country - but 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 increasingly confident in itself.

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

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