In one of Tim Snyders Yale lectures on Ukrainian history, goes overboard about the left bank/right bank in respect of the Dniepro. The river runs north to south, so the right bank is basically the west. I strongly suspect he has trouble telling his left from his right; I've read an essay in which there is a map with a small patch of Russia (coloured red) in the bottom-left, but the caption says it's bottom-right.

I suspect the reason he made a meal of this subject (and the reason he insists on using the left/right terminology) is because he finds it challenging.

I learned it with the Seine, in Paris: the left bank is to the south of the right bank. It's also where the bulk of the 1968 political protest happened; the protestors were leftists. The Seine generally flows south to north, emptying into the English Channel.