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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is unquestionably 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.

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

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 folk rap group from Western Ukraine, acquired their probability as a substitute.

Wearing traditional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy but repressed musical traditions, they are 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 needs reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they are going to be representing a nation that is more and more assured in itself.

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

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