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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

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

But this year’s event is political for other causes too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can characterize Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s authentic alternative.

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

However when it was alleged she had visited occupied Crimea, she was dropped amid public outcry.

Kalush Orchestra, a folk rap group from Western Ukraine, bought their probability as a substitute.

Wearing traditional outfits and drawing on the country’s long however repressed musical traditions, they are an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine will not be an actual country - however merely a "little Russia", a region that wants reintegration.

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

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

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