Ukraine struggle newest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

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

But this 12 months’s event is political for different causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can symbolize Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s authentic alternative.

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 as a substitute.

Wearing 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 shouldn't be a real country - however merely a "little Russia", a area that needs reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they will be representing a nation that's increasingly assured in itself.

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

A struggle predicated on the concept that this country had no nationwide id, no foundational myths, no nationwide heroes, no will to withstand, is what's uniting Ukraine more with every passing day.