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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

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

However this year’s occasion is political for different reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can represent Ukraine tonight, was not the nation’s authentic choice.

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, acquired their chance instead.

Wearing conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy but 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 region 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 coronary heart of president Putin’s invasion.

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