CBS partially retracts documentary claiming U.S. military shipments to Ukraine were going missing

On Monday, news station CBS issued a partial retraction after they released a documentary which hinted that the majority of weapons sent to Ukraine didn’t make it to the front line.

“We removed a tweet promoting our recent doc, ‘Arming Ukraine,’ which quoted the founder of the NGO Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman saying that only 30% of aid made its way to the front line in Ukraine,” CBS stated in a tweet. CHS also added an “editor’s note” alongside the written coverage of the documentary.

“We are updating our documentary to reflect this new information and air at a later date,” CBS said.

Ohman hit out at CBS and said that his comments were taken “somewhat out of context.” Ohman acknowledged that things have greatly improved since April and that the CBS show was a “parallel storyline” in light of the new developments.

Ukraine Foreign Minister Dymetro Kubela praised the retraction, but urged CBS to conduct an internal investigation of how the documentary managed to get the go-ahead in the first place. 

“You have misled a huge audience by sharing unsubstantiated claims and damaging trust in supplies of vital military aid to a nation resisting aggression and genocide,” Kubela said.

A similar issue happened when Indiana Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz, who was born in Ukraine, drew severe criticism from Ukraine’s foreign ministry in July when she requested an investigation into Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.

Spartz stated that intelligence “alleged dealings in connection with Russia,” as per a press release from her office. “We owe this level of rigor and accountability to the American people as Ukraine urgently needs increased levels and speed of security assistance,” Spartz said at the time.