“I think it is absolutely in the interest of US security. It is extremely good value for money for the United States and others, for perhaps about 5 or 10% of your (US) defence budget, almost half of Russia’s pre war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life.” Lord Cameron speaking in Washington this week.

An admission that this is a proxy war, in which the “West” supplies the munitions and the Ukrainians do the dying, if ever there was one.

The review on Labour Hub of Volodymyr Ishchenko’s Towards the Abyss – Ukraine from Maidan to War is a bit sniffy at how “even handed” he is; but in examining who he is being “even handed” between allows a chink of reality into a discourse on that site that has refused to acknowledge any fissures in Ukrainian identity at all up to now.

All the previous articles self referentially quoted in this review were consistent in dismissing the people in Crimea and Donbass who rebelled against the consequences of the Maidan movement and the incorporation of Ukraine into the Western Bloc either as non existent or, at most, a minority of Russian proxies.

But in this review we do have a recognition that Ukraine did indeed “polarise” towards, in and beyond the Maidan movement; in a way self servingly summarised by pro “western” commentators as between ‘new’ Ukraine – “young, metropolitan, cosmopolitan, fluent in English, stylish, mobile, liberal, well-educated, successful” to the old ‘Soviet’ or ‘Russian’ outlook – “old, conservative, provincial, rigid, clinging to dying industries, poorly or inadequately educated, in bad taste, losers.” “Sovoks” as the dismissive term goes in Kyiv.

This is worth noting as the first time that this reality has been acknowledged in a Labour Hub article. Its possible that this is simply for purposes of this review, and normal service will be resumed shortly, but taking it on board is essential for any serious search for a peaceful solution that does not go by way of a massive Western escalation, with a possible nuclear component, and a (now implausible) march on Rostov on Don.

However, though the summary of the polarity in this review does not minimise the scale of it, unlike previous articles on Hub, it continues to ignore a different, more disturbing, dimension. That the largely Russian speaking, and oriented, East, was, and is, for the most part industrial working class. The Donbass, in which the war is being fought, is heavily built up, with densely packed strings of urban settlements built around mines, or strung out like heavy, gritty beads along the main roads.

The EU – and now US – oriented Ukrainian speaking West, is more agricultural; with wide open spaces with sparse villages. Look at an aeriel view. The Ukrainian nationalism nurtured there draws from deep wells of peasant suspicion of urban elites, with poisonous roots reaching back through Banderist collaboration with the Nazis (all those concentration camp guards) and beyond, to Pyet Lyura’s short lived nationalist regime at the end of World War 1; notorious for pogroms even more severe than those carried out by the White Guards during the Russian Civil War.

This has its modern day expression in influential organisations now incorporated into the Ukrianian armed forces, like the Azov battalion or the Right Sector – whose leader has been filmed saying “certain people have too much influence in Ukraine… you know, like Russians…and Jews” . Not so “metropolitan”, “cosmopolitan” or “liberal” then.

A nationalism generated in service to a greater Empire runs in the tradition of this sort of Ukrainian nationalism. First for the Habsburgs, then the Nazis, now the USA. A self image as a frontier people, “a large Israel in eastern Europe”, as President Zelensky put it. In its full fat far right form, full of suicidal self romanticism: seeing themselves as the 300 Spartans against the Asiatic hordes. A view also actively promoted within the Left by the John Bull like Ukraine Solidarity Campaign weekly bulletins that paint a picture of Russian soldiers as the sort of sub human orcs that Georgia Melloni imagines them to be. Which is why the transatlantic far right has sent so many volunteers to fight in the Donbass since 2014, a practice now getting a nod and a wink from NATO governments, with “off duty” French Foreign Legionnaires beginning to appear in casualty lists.

But perhaps not quite so self sacrificial. Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that are effectively insourced far right militias, like the 67th Mechanised Brigade for the Right Sector and the 3rd Assault Brigade for Azov, tend to be used behind the lines to deter retreats and deserters. When put in the front lines they are developing a reputation for self preservation; with the 3rd refusing to take up what they considered to be suicidal positions in Avdiivka last month and, just this week, Chassiv Yar, while the 67th abandoned their positions there to avoid encirclement rather than seek the heroic martyrdom they advocate for others.

These are nevertheless the shock troops and guarantors of “the Ukrainian government’s decision to stick to neoliberal dogmas of privatization, lowering taxes and extreme labour deregulation, despite the objective imperatives of the war economy” as Ishchenko puts it.

But still, a polarisation. Two sides, in Ukraine. In which the tradition described by Ishchenko which celebrates the hostory that “Ukraine was crucial to the greatest social revolution and modernization breakthrough in human history. Ukraine was where some of the most significant battles of World War II took place” and in which “Millions of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in the Red Army contributed huge sacrifices to defeat Nazi Germany” is actively celebrated in Donbass and Crimea; while people are arrested for expressing it in Western Ukraine. “Western” here being a term that is both geographical and political.

So, a civil war, in which the Russians are engaged with what they see as their people, and NATO is engaged with what have become their proxies. It is, indeed, innappropriate for anyone on the left to be “even handed” in a polarisation like this.

It takes a heroic act of disavowell on Labour Hub’s part to consider the economic polices outlined above to be a sovereign act by Kyiv, with the US and EU having no influence whatsoever; even though the “reconstruction plan” due to be administered by Blackrock after “victory” will take this to frenzied levels; initially conceived as a way for Western capital to carve up Ukrainian resources, with the oligarchy getting a cut, but, in the context of defeat, so the “West” can salvage what it can from the wreck of its military ambitions.

There is similar disavowell in the breezy assertion – contrary to everything the Russians said about their motivation since at least 2008 – that “Russia’s war on Ukraine had very little to do with a supposed ‘NATO threat’”. “Supposed ‘NATO threat'”? Its amazing how dismissive you can be just by using an adjective and a pair of inverted commas. Perish the thought that NATO outspending the Russians on arms by more than eleven to one, expanding right up to their border and carrying out annual war games practicing to fight them could be considered a threat in Moscow.

A way to picture that is this infographic, which has the NATO tank 11 times the size of the Russian tank and therefore has the respective threats in proportion. Not something that is ever evident in the media here, nor, sadly, on Labour Hub.

The US alone spends seven and a half times as much as the Russians do. Add together all the direct US allies and they account for 67% of global military spending. They are the core of Global imperialism. The military expenditure is to secure their ongoing exploitative relationship to the rest of the world. We know that they are willing to use this, and have done. Four and a half million people have died in the “war on terror” since 2001. And President Biden is busily pushing Congress to authroise an additional $18 billion in militray aid to Israel, even as it commits its genocide in Gaza, while at the same time as cutting off aid to UNWRA to further facilitate it. so, they are not intervening in Ukraine now, and did not intervene in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution or in the Maidan movement, out of any romantic belief in the self determination of nations; quite the reverse. As Anthony Blinken put it recently, “if you’re not at the table, you’ll probably be on the menu”.

This was a war of choice by NATO. A deal guaranteeing Ukrainian neutrality, autonomy for the Donbass within Ukraine, and open ended, possibly eternal, negotiations about the status of Crimea and mutual security guarantees for the whole of Europe were on the table in the Winter of 2021. That would have been a good result for everyone in Ukraine and eased tensions across Europe. NATO wouldn’t even discuss it. It is still the best outcome for the working class in Ukraine, and in the rest of Europe, and the world.

Without an even more catastrophic escalation, possibly through the Samson option foreshadowed by the UAFs recent drone attacks on the Zaporizhye nuclear power station, NATO is now heading, slowly, inexorably, towards defeat.

Continuing cheerleading for pursuit of this war pulls us all towards the “abyss” of Ishchenko’s title, but the people of Ukraine most of all.