© Damien EagersClare Daly.
A section of the Irish establishment who never wanted neutrality now see the Ukraine invasion as an opportunity to end it completely, she warned.
Meanwhile, EU militarism and NATO are two sides of the same coin, and the arms industry is profiting hugely from the current conflict.
This was not to absolve Russia, which is "100 per cent responsible" for invading Ukraine, Ms Daly told the Casement summer school in Dun Laoghaire today.
Comment: Well, Russia is responsible in the sense that it is responsible for its actions, however in terms of international norms, experts from across the globe have been warning for decades that Russia would be forced to respond to the threat NATO posed to its security.
"We have six million people forced to flee, thousands dead, the disruption of Ukraine, a food security crisis and an economic crisis, plunging the EU into a deep recession — and unambiguously Russia bears responsibility for this. They invaded and violated Ukraine's integrity," she said.
Comment: Ukraine has been a vassal of the US since the coup in 2014.
"But we cannot ignore the part played by the EU and the US. That's not to excuse Russia. It's simply to explain, because you cannot solve a problem if you don't understand the root of it."
Ms Daly listed Western interventions in other countries and the alleged constant drumbeat for more defence spending in developed states, which had stoked confrontation and reaction.
She added: "I was really interested to see the comments of the Pope on this point. He has been resolute in his condemnation from the beginning, but last week he came out and said that NATO bears responsibility for facilitating Russia's invasion and for fomenting international interests in the same way in Syria, Yemen and so on.
"Pretty much the first thing I thought was: 'Was he robbing my notes?'. The second thing I thought was that the Pope was going to be accused of being a Putin puppet or an embarrassment and a disgrace," Ms Daly said, referring to epithets that had been used about herself.
"The narrative of the goodies and the baddies is out there, and if you do not talk in that narrative, then you are a baddie," she said, saying such people would either be "ignored or demonised".
While the war was going on, "the response of the EU and the Irish Government had pretty much been to escalate the war and to ensure it continues," she claimed.
There had been a fanfare during the week about sanctions, and she was against the Russian oil embargo, she said. "Not because I'm sorry for Russia, not because I'm on the Putin payroll, but because sanctions don't work. They have never stopped a war.
"Not a single Ukrainian life will be saved" by the European oil embargo, because only 30 of 195 countries internationally were imposing sanctions against Russia and it would trade elsewhere. "If Europe isn't buying it, someone else will. The ordinary people of Europe will be paying that price."
The other solution was to continue to pour arms into the conflict, which was not to say that Ukraine did not have the right to defend itself, she said.
"It absolutely has. But you don't hear that being said about arming people in Iraq or Palestine or Yemen," she noted, adding that the Western narrative had now openly changed to this being "a proxy war against Russia".
Many senior figures had said they wanted the war to continue in order to weaken Russia, she said.
"Think about the consequences of what they're saying. Because what that means is what Hillary Clinton talked about - the Afghanistan-isation of Ukraine. It means devastation, destruction, enormous loss of life, and the people of Ukraine will be the ones paying for that."
She quoted Ukrainian peace activist Yurii Sheliazhenko: "If you prepare for war, you get war. If you prepare for peace, you get peace."
The solution "is actually demilitarisation," she said. But of course this was 'heresy,' because "the Military-Industrial Complex are the ones fanning the flames of war.
"This is the product of the response of the EU and corporate capture by the arms industry."
A conference of personalities had been called - "now it wasn't Johnny Depp and Amber Heard" — and nine of the 16 involved had been representatives of the arms industry. "What did they come up with? Europe needs to have more research and more developments in arms and defence. Who got the contracts? The very same people who gave the advice."
Barry Andrews MEP, said, however that he had heard accusations against the EU, NATO and the United States, but none against Russia in Ms Daly's speech.
"Centrally the blame for what is happening in Ukraine lies in the Kremlin," Mr Andrews said.
The left in Ireland had never appreciated the threat from Russia, he said. Yesterday (Thursday) there had been debate in the European Parliament about the "prolonged sexual torture and murder" of women in Ukraine. "I will spare you the details," he said.
Comment: He'll spare us the details, and the evidence, apparently. Meanwhile Russia is gathering evidence of the torture and murder of civilians and POWs by Ukraine's neo-Nazi aligned military, as well as the illegal US biowarfare programs in the country; some of which it already tried to present to the UN, only for Britain to block it doing so, twice.
But even if Putin was removed, there was a danger that there were those "more maniacal" who would take over, he said.
But Mr Andrews said: "I don't believe any of the nuclear threats we see on Russian state television. The threat to Ireland comes in other ways."
It came from disinformation and cyber attacks, which had taken place in this country in the hack of the HSE. The criminal gang behind it, White Spider, based in St Petersburg, had been "facilitated by the Russian regime."
He also cited the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner MH-17 over Ukraine by Russians serving with secessionist groups in the Donbas, using a Russian BUK surface to air missile.
Comment: The evidence for MH-17 reveals that it was likely shot down by those operating in Ukraine.
Russia was lying and engaging in propaganda on all issues and seeking to undermine the West because in order for Vladimir Putin's regime to be secure, it needed to show that democracies were failing.
The expelled Russian diplomats, formerly based in Dublin, had been engaged in disinformation, he said. Russian was engaged in undermining democracy everywhere, and it needed to be defended in Ireland as in other countries.
And the west isn't doing the same?