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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This yr's Eurovision is surely 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 around the rest of the continent.

But this 12 months’s event is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can symbolize Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s unique choice.

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

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

Kalush Orchestra, a folks rap group from Western Ukraine, got their likelihood as a substitute.

Dressed in conventional 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 will not be an actual country - however merely a "little Russia", a area that wants reintegration.

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

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

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