Ukraine war latest: Russians pushed back far out of Kharkiv – Metropolis mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

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

But this year’s occasion is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which will represent Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s original alternative.

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 folk rap group from Western Ukraine, bought their likelihood as a substitute.

Wearing traditional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy however repressed musical traditions, they're an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is just not a real country - but 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 is more and more confident in itself.

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

A war predicated on the concept that this nation had no national identification, no foundational myths, no national heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine extra with each passing day.