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

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

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

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

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

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 folks rap group from Western Ukraine, got their chance instead.

Dressed in conventional outfits and drawing on the country’s lengthy however repressed musical traditions, they are an implicit rebuke to the suggestion, oft repeated by Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine is just not a real nation - but merely a "little Russia", a area that needs reintegration.

Tonight, when the Kalash Orchestra take to the stage, they will be representing a nation that is increasingly assured in itself.

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

A struggle predicated on the idea that this country had no nationwide identity, no foundational myths, no nationwide heroes, no will to resist, is what's uniting Ukraine extra with each passing day.