Ukraine struggle newest: Russians pushed again far out of Kharkiv – City mayor

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

This 12 months's Eurovision is surely the most political in a long time.

Russia has been banned. Ukraine is the runaway favourite to win, buoyed by a normal sense of solidarity around the rest of the continent.

However this 12 months’s occasion is political for other reasons too. The Kalush Orchestra, the act which can signify Ukraine tonight, was not the country’s authentic alternative.

That was Alina Pash, a 29-year-old rapper and former actuality 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, obtained their chance as an alternative.

Wearing traditional outfits and drawing on the nation’s lengthy but repressed musical traditions, they are an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine shouldn't be an actual country - but merely a "little Russia", a region that wants reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they are going to be representing a nation that's 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 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.