Comments by "duncan smith" (@duncansmith7562) on "International donors pledge about $1bn in civilian aid for Ukraine | DW News" video.

Lou Smith Zelensky owns a villa in Tuscany and a mansion in Miami. Are EU citizens as wealthy as Zelensky?
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Lou Smith if EU people are so rich and generous, why not make it voluntary instead of via government? very easy to be rich and generous with other peoples' money.
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the West urged Russia to follow the "rules-based system" of the West, Russia saw how NATO targeted civilian infrastructure in sovereign Serbia, and has copied such behavior in Ukraine. Bit confusing why the West hasn't congratulated Russia
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@bonnie7898 then let's keep it as private donations and no government throwing taxpayer money at the futile war. and let's hope Zelensky decides to help his own people by selling his properties in USA and Italy, but then again, don't hold your breath.
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@alfonsosalazarestrada6091 if you can write that again in English, I will be able to answer you!
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@EspenFrafalne the problem here is you have backed yourself into a corner and you don't like it. you bought the media lies that Ukraine was the good side in this, but when examined, it turns out both Donbass and Crimea had legitimate reasons to reject the 2014 coup. the fact you believe these separatists should be forced at the point of a bayonet to accept a coup speaks volumes for your lack of morals and your confusion. Slava Donbasu.
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@fry22417 so true. call me crazy, but if Putin had asked me last December for talks on security and status of Ukraine, I would have accepted immediately.
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so indefinite aid pledged to Ukraine. Russia started with the aim of demilitarizing Ukraine. it ends up with demilitarization of Ukraine, bankruptcy of Ukraine, demilitarization of the West, and soon, bankruptcy of the West. What a bunch of imbeciles Western leaders are.
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it won't. Russia will just step up its campaign of destruction that NATO has no answer to. it will just place yet more burdens on the EU taxpayers.
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Lou Smith Now is the time to get real and tell Ukraine to surrender, make peace and never trust NATO ever again.
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@EspenFrafalne as an honest person, I know if I were leader and my embattled country needed money, I would sell my property abroad and give the proceeds to my people. For "honest" Zelensky to be owner of two luxury properties, but continually beg for money is dishonest and scandalous. Zelensky is listed in the Panama Papers. He is corrupt and shameless, and the fact you support him speaks volumes for the very low moral values you have.
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@alfonsosalazarestrada6091 the "much jealousy" one, no idea what you were saying in that message
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@alfonsosalazarestrada6091 si te expresas mejor en castellano, puede ser una opción
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@EspenFrafalne as an honest person, I do see that the corrupt Ukrainian leadership post 2014 wants to be on the side of the West. As an honest person why don't you see that the 2014 coup was anti democratic?
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@EspenFrafalne Reality check. Ukraine is not s member of the EU. It has not joined the EU. It is a candidate country. Learn some basic facts, child.
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@EspenFrafalne Ukraine has begged to join NATO. NATO, if you are an honest person you would see this, has encouraged Ukraine to apply for NATO membership, but has also refused to admit Ukraine! Welcome to the duplicitous and hypocritical world of NATO! Now that Ukraine understands that NATO was bever serious about admitting Ukraine, it has given up on that idea and conceded as much in the Istanbul talks in March
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@EspenFrafalne The Ukrainian people know very little about Zelensky. How could they? Their parliament has no opposition party, the media is now all state media, in a tyranny like that, how can the people know much about anything? you live in a land of fantasy!
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@EspenFrafalne As a president his job is to ask for help. yes. as an honest person, his duty is to sell his luxury properties abroad and donate the proceeds to his war. it is called leading by example. ever heard of such a thing?
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@EspenFrafalne yes, Zelensky is begging. Zelensky has bankrupted his country, so now he has to beg his puppet masters for support. Zelensky was a total fool to believe NATO promises that Ukraine would emerge victorious. It won't. Only a total fool would see how Russia operated in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria and assume that Russia would be defeated in a ground war, Idiocy. Now Zelensky and the West are paying the price. The sad thing is that it is the Western taxpayers that are paying the ever increasing bill, while Zelesnky still kas his mansion in Miami and his villa in Tuscany. You are backing the wrong horse, and you should be ashamed.
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@EspenFrafalne at the time of the Maidan Coup, exactly how many of the Ukrainian people wanted to oust Yanukovich? What was the percentage, as per a reliable opinion poll? At the moment, polls show the majority of the British people want a general election and not two more years of Conservative government. Would that fact legitimize a coup and removal of the current government in the UK? yes or no.
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@EspenFrafalne protest is fine by me. People who say "respect the revolution" or "respect the people's will" deserve total disdain, and that would include you. Either you believe in democracy, or you do not. If you do, what happened to Yanukovich and democracy in Ukraine should be denounced by you, not championed. Make your mind up.
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@EspenFrafalne so what is the West's "rules-based order"? every time there are protests and skulls cracked in a foreign country, we, the West, have the duty to enter said country and overthrow the government? really? so how come we are so selective and we support mass protests in Kiev but not in Ottawa?
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@EspenFrafalne nice pivot, didn't work. how about you respond to my question, then I will be happy to deal with NATO membership. or maybe you just want to admit now, you have absolutely no idea the percentage of Ukrainian voters who approved of the ousting of Yanukovich?
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@EspenFrafalne i repeat, if you believe in democracy you would insist that Yanukovich should have been removed by the ballot box, and by the ballot box only. if you support a coup d'etat you then have to question your own belief in democracy and be honest and say seizing power is ok.
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@EspenFrafalne so, how do you decide which revolutionary movements to support and which ones to reject in favor of democracy?
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@EspenFrafalne elensky has banned all opposition parties from parliament and only state sanctioned media is allowed to broadcast. traits of a dictator to me. what do you think?
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@EspenFrafalne so, based on what you "believe" is 50% support to overthrow a government in a coup, going totally against the Ukrainian constitution, you are absolutely sure that it was right to support the aggrieved 50% and also it was right to compel areas like Donbass and Crimea to accept the new illegal government, or be shelled and attacked for disobeying the new undemocratic government in power, backed by 50% of the people. that is your position and that makes sense to you?
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@EspenFrafalne why not wait until the next Ukrainian presidential election to remove Yanukovich at the ballot box? you know, the usual democratic way?
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@EspenFrafalne I am pushing you to use your brain. you have not delineated when a revolution is justified and when it is not. You have labeled Yanukovich a dictator, but Yanukovich was democratically elected and presided over a country with opposition parties (those Parliamentarians who removed him). So, the confused one is you. you back the Orange Revolution based on the fact that 50% of the voters wanted it, you believe, based on Wikipedia! really?
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@EspenFrafalne NATO should have joined Russia in denouncing the 2014 coup and supporting both Donbass and Crimea self-determination. It's that simple.
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@karenatha7890 if I were Zelinsky, having "promised peace in the Donbass", my shoes would have taken me straight to the Kremlin with the words "Mr. Putin, let's talk about how we get a resolution for the Ukrainians who voted for me and for the Donbass Russians and Crimeans who hate my guts".
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@EspenFrafalne I am happy to answer any question at all! Not a problem for me! I don't believe in the "legitimization" of any revolution. If a nation's population want a revolution, let them go ahead. If it has a negative effect on my people then I would have to consider the pros and cons of intervening in the revolution, but if it makes no difference to my people, who cares?
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@EspenFrafalne The BLM riots are an excellent example of why I believe the West has lost BOTH security and freedom. I no longer feel either safe or free in the cities of the West, and I no longer feel I have freedom of expression anywhere in the West, so I think somewhere like Russia or Mexico would be best for me when I am able to get out of Europe.
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@EspenFrafalne so my answer is hypocrisy free. i don't care about revolutions unless they directly affect me and my life. your answer puts you in a corner. some revolutions are worth supporting, you say, and some are not. but now, when you come to delineating which ones are worth supporting and which not, you get stuck in a corner. your moral compass goes all over the place. in the case of the coup in Ukraine you back it 100%, but your rather feeble explanation of "because 50% of the people did, according to Wikipedia, and because the democratically elected president had become a bit dictator like" seems a rather feeble rationale. my stance of "let the Ukrainians revolt, but also let the Donbass and Crimea separate" seems much more reasonable (and would have avoided this war).
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@EspenFrafalne I have no idea what systematic police brutality is. do you mean the kind of police brutality seen in Ukraine that meant pro Russia supporters get beaten and tortured?
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@EspenFrafalne Kosovo and Albania were split up? when? Kosovo was part of Serbia, but NATO thought it was a brilliant idea to attack the sovereign territory of Serbia and support the separatist claims of Kosovo. Do YOU support this NATO move? If so, explain why NATO attacking a sovereign state to support a separatist group is acceptable, but Russia doing the same in Ukraine is not. If you can't explain clearly, you are stuck in a corner again!
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@EspenFrafalne thanks for the lecture on the Kurds. now, to the point. do you support the Kurds' claim for their own state and why or why not? I don't care at all, means nothing to me, but you, you so passionately deny the right to Donbass and Crimea yet, I guess DO support the Kurds?
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@EspenFrafalne There was no reason for Yanukovich to separate the country because there was no call to separate the country. Under Yanukovich, no one was calling for any separation. Calls only came for separation, understandably, after the coup. I'm not complaining that Russia is losing all of Ukraine. Russia never had any of Ukraine! Russia doesn't want all of Ukraine, or even half of it. You are very confused. Read the 5 objectives of Putin again....the LAST thing Putin wants is to have to deal with Ukrainians who don't want to be part of the Russian Federation!
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@EspenFrafalne your moral compass is all wrong because you should be supporting the ethnic Russians who wanted no part of a coup that removed a democratically elected president. instead, you support the violence, murder and massacre of those separatists, over the last 8 years, and that speaks volumes for your heartless treatment of minorities.
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@EspenFrafalne again, "generally against splitting up countries based on conflicts." that is pretty vague! If Russia is to follow the West's "rules based order" you need to be a bit more specific than that! what about splitting up countries based on historical claims, not conflict. You dodged the Kurds question, claiming ignorance, so let's try these. Scotland, do you support that claim for separation? Catalonia? and the one you refuse to tackle...Kosovo? do the "troublemakers" in the Donbass include the children buried in the Alley of Angels? are "troublemakers" now defined as anyone ready to fight for democracy and oppose living under a regime in place because of a coup? and when you say "low numbers", what is that number? how many freedom fighters need to be killed before you think it is a claim for separation you would support? If I told you far fewer people died in Kosovo than in Donbass, would you accept that and conclude mostly "troublemakers" were stirring things up in Kosovo and that NATO, therefore, was wrong to attack sovereign Serbia and that NATO should be prosecuted for war crimes?
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@tanjiro2507 of course he is. This is how tyrannies work. the charges are meaningless. Poroshenko was detained and questioned too, so in Ukraine, any ex leader faces such charges. Democracy went out the window in 2014 in Ukraine
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@tanjiro2507 maybe so, but he was democratically elected and could have been democratically voted out of office for being a Putin puppet, but instead was illegally ousted, so bye bye Democracy in Ukraine.
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@tanjiro2507 not true, it was a coup d'etat. Revolutions only occur where there is no democratic process available to remove a government in power. Ukraine could have removed Yanukovich at the next presidential election
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