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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months'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 around the remainder of the continent.

However this 12 months’s occasion is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which is able to represent Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s authentic selection.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former actuality show contestant.

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

Kalush Orchestra, a folks rap group from Western Ukraine, obtained their chance as an alternative.

Wearing conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s long however repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine just isn't a real nation - however merely a "little Russia", a area 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 confident in itself.

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

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