CBS reported Sunday that the network is updating a new documentary, “Arming Ukraine,” after it interviewed a witness who claimed many of the weapons sent to the nation from the U.S. never reach the front lines.
One small quote on U.S. military aid from Blue/Yellow nonprofit founder Jonas Ohman sparked international outrage over the weekend. “Like 30% of it reaches its final destination,” Ohman told whoever was behind the CBS cameras at some point in April during filming.
CBS used Ohman’s quote to promote “Arming Ukraine” on social media, and Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba went ballistic. Kuleba accused the network of misleading a huge audience with Ohman’s statistical claim. He said that CBS was sharing “unsubstantiated evidence” and “damaging trust,” and he demanded an internal investigation into who enabled the interview to be part of the documentary, and why.
US Citizen Killed In Ukraine During Russian Attackhttps://t.co/fnXc6TrIpA
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 17, 2022
I don’t know anything about Ohman. He could be a great guy with incredible evidence. He might be awful and exaggerating the numbers. He’s probably somewhere in between, but he still said something that clearly rattled the Ukrainian government enough to silence him and influence the narrative of American storytelling.
CBS is not the first outlet to question what happens to weapons sent to Ukraine. CNN wrote about it in April. Fears of arms smuggling were voiced by The Washington Post in May. Even an Italian news outlet reported on the seizure of U.S.-made drones arriving from Canada that were bound for Qatar but supposedly headed to Russia instead, according to Decode 39.
American leaders are concerned, too. The first and only Ukrainian-born lawmaker Republican Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz suggested in an interview on Ukrainian television that weapons sent to the country by the U.S. and other western nations are ending up in Russia and Syria, according to Politico.
Ukraine scores in the lowest third of Transparency International’s corruption scale at 32/100, suggesting serious concerns over arms trafficking. “Ukraine certainly has problems with corruption, and if that’s the case in a country, you can be sure that some of these weapons will be lost or transferred or sold,” a former State Department official told Vox in May.
Mariupol “Doesn’t Exist Anymore” https://t.co/kUiSKqXpuh
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 18, 2022
CBS isn’t “updating” anything by bowing down to Kuleba’s demands to remove the content from “Arming Ukraine” — rather, they’re caving to a narrative that all Ukrainian-flag-in-their-bio-blue-check-marks want to be true: that this is a noble war. Some missing weapons are an understandable part of the chaos of war, but 70%? And to have this many people voice concerns suggests an investigation is absolutely needed, but not into CBS.
Documentary films are supposed to tell all stories from all angles, no matter how crazy the claims the participants make. CBS is purposefully altering its documentary to fit with Kuleba’s unsubstantiated data while silently covering for the Biden administration, which sent billions of U.S. dollars — your money — to Ukraine, only to potentially have, maybe not most, but likely some of it end up in the hands of organized criminals.
No one seems to be calling for an investigation into the actual amount of U.S. military aid reaching the front lines of Ukraine’s war with Russia. Everyone is focused on calling Ohman’s statistic a lie, fake news, and scolding CBS for reporting on it. It’s almost like this statistic would make Ukraine and Biden look bad in the lead-up to the midterm elections if it were true.
It kind of reminds me of that time the First Son left his laptop at a repair shop and the contents were leaked online, but hardly any left-leaning outlet would report on it because it could have shifted the entire course of American history.
Just like with Hunter Biden’s laptop, we deserve to know if this story of Ohman’s is true. Are billions of dollars of military aid going to the front lines of Ukraine, or are these weapons being sold on the black market? (RELATED: Insane Footage Shows British Journalists Under Brutal Russian Attack In Ukraine)
However, the bigger issue here is that a foreign government just influenced an American news outlet to perpetuate their potential propaganda. CBS proved themselves to be the most spineless, useless “news” outlet of all time by deciding to take direction from a foreign government. The team clearly has zero journalistic integrity, and I’m embarrassed for them.
The saddest part of this entire situation is that the world found out via Twitter. I sure hope that calls were made between Kuleba and CBS before this became public knowledge on Twitter, but what if they weren’t? We really don’t know enough right now. We can almost assume, sadly, that we just watched a foreign government threaten and successfully manipulate an American news outlet…via Twitter.