Ukraine struggle latest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This year's Eurovision is unquestionably probably the most political in a very long time.

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

But this yr’s occasion is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can signify Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s original choice.

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, got their likelihood as an alternative.

Wearing conventional outfits and drawing on the nation’s long but repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine shouldn't be 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's more and more assured in itself.

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

A warfare predicated on the idea that this nation had no national identification, no foundational myths, no national heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine more with every passing day.