On Saturday night, far from the ruins that were once homes and the battlefields that were once cities, Ukraine secured an emphatic victory that had nothing to do with rifles, antitank weaponry or Molotov cocktails, and everything to do with hopeful words, folkloric dance moves and a continental eruption of cultural solidarity.
Following the Kalush Orchestra’s triumph in the 2022 Eurovision song contest, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he hoped next year’s final would take place in the besieged port city of Mariupol, which has endured some of the most merciless onslaughts of the Russian invasion.
