excerpts from here: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/22/ffci-d22.html

ethno-nationalism is the core principle of political organization and policy in both cases, and the US/NATO help stoke the bonfire as needed to keep it burning bright and strong

and both saw a lot of ethnic pogroms during adjacent time periods that served to define the ethno-nationalist identity that remains with them to the present day

“The Kiev discourse on the Donbas war focuses almost exclusively on the geopolitical level and the relationship with Russia,” the paper says. The absence of a “local level of conflict” in this view has “serious consequences for the perception of the affected civilian population,” which is “perceived in Kiev as backward-looking, Soviet-influenced, unproductive, and authoritarian.” In the eyes of most interlocutors, “the Donbas cannot be about ‘reconciliation’ between individual ethnic or social groups.” From Kiev’s point of view, peace-building “will only be possible once the territories have been liberated, i.e., once they are once again completely under Ukrainian control.”

“Even though right-wing and far-right parties have not achieved significant success in elections since 2014, nationalist ideas have held considerable influence in the social debate over the conflict in the east (as well as on other issues). Time and again, nationalist actors succeed in forcing political leaders to adjust their policies.”

In 2017, for example, the “proportion of people without access to balanced nutrition” was 86 percent in the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and 55 percent in Kiev-controlled areas. Since 2014, tens of thousands of homes have been damaged and destroyed. According to the OSCE, both sides—but particularly the Ukrainian Armed Forces—targeted civilian property.

The regime in Kiev, it said, did not care. “Quite a few politicians in Kiev regard the Donbas as an unnecessary economic burden and its population as backward-looking and politically unreliable. Its willingness to work to alleviate humanitarian hardship in the areas affected by conflict is correspondingly low,” the SWP paper says.