Victor Serge described those who ended up fighting against the Bolsheviks , such as Simon Petliura, as “Nationalist-Socialists”, others like Vynnychenko and Hrushevsky, tried at various times to work with the Bolsheviks.

When Germany pulled out of the War, Petliura’s forces were temporarily stronger than the Reds and the Makhnovites. But as soon as he was threatened, he formed an alliance with French Imperialism.

The Directorate agreed to place itself:-

“under the protection of France and requests the French authorities to guide it on all diplomatic, military political, economic and judicial questions until the conclusion of the struggle against Bolshevism”

This involved a secret agreement to turn parts of Ukraine into a French Protectorate and give France concessions on the railways. French forces then entered Odessa and Kherson before being kicked out by an unholy alliance between the turncoat adventurer Nikifor Grigoriev, Alexandra Kollantai’s Cossack husband Pavel Dybenko and Nestor Makhno’s anarchist forces.
Needless to say, this alliance soon fell apart, but it highlights the complex situation during the Civil War.

Ukrainian nationalists have often faced this dilemma and still do.

I do not find it easy to apply the positions of the Bolsheviks, the Comintern, and Trotsky on self-determination to the present crisis in Ukraine without a close analysis of the forces at work in that country, which is hard to carry out at this distance.
As a socialist in Canada, I think the place to start is the fact that the Canadian government responded to the crisis there by sending troops to Estonia, whose border is only slightly over 100 kilometers from St. Petersburg.
This provocative action has no precedent since the attempt to seize Wrangel Island from the Soviet state for Canada in the early 1920s.