Last week, CBS News hit social media with a promotional blitz for a documentary called “Army Ukraine.” The thrust of the documentary, according to the promos, was that only 30% of the US weapons sent to Ukraine ever made it to the Ukrainian Army.
The documentary was immediately supported by the West’s Russian media, and their sympathizers. Russia Today (RT), describes it as:
CBS News reported that the US and its allies pledge unprecedented amounts of military support to Ukraine. A CBS News story suggested that just 30% of the weapons they send to Ukraine actually reach the frontlines. This report confirms ongoing allegations of corruption and profiteering on the black market.
Over $54Billion of US economic and military assistance has been approved for Ukraine by the US since February. Nearly $3Billion has been committed to military aid in the UK, with another $2.5B being spent on arms. An entire spectrum of equipment, from rifles and grenades to anti-tank missiles and multiple launch rocket systems have left the West’s armories for Ukraine, with most entering the country through Poland.
Some people, even though they should have known better, are pro-Russian because many progressives support Ukraine. They just went along.
Are there any Russian bots who have said the same thing in March and were called Russian bots?
Now, when CBS says it, it’s perfectly fine.
No matter what, the truth is out. Most of Ukraine’s aid scams are bogus. https://t.co/8AdHTA4n4i
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) August 6, 2022
CBS News Takes Ukraine under the Bus.
CBS now has the documentary.
A tweet we removed, “Arming Ukraine,” that promoted our latest doc, was deleted. The tweet quoted Jonas Ohman (founder of Blue-Yellow), who said in late April, only 30% of Ukraine’s aid reached the front lines. pic.twitter.com/EgA96BrD9O
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 8, 2022
This is how you will see it if you really try.
Pro-Russian trolling trolls such as Michael Tracey were criticized.
CBS claimed that this documentary was “being updated” due to a huge tsunami of trolling and criticisms. Original link removed pic.twitter.com/b04P5KlRC7
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 8, 2022
Unlike many commenting on the documentary, I reviewed and took notes on it as I’d planned to write on it this week. I was first aware that the piece had been pulled when the link I’d embedded to the documentary in this story returned a 404 yesterday.
Jonas Ohman is the center of this documentary. He runs Blue Yellow, a non-governmental organisation (NGO). It has been collecting/purchasing, and distributing non-lethal aid to a “patchwork of improvised military units,” his words, not mine, since 2014. Ohman says his organization only moves non-lethal aid, and he doesn’t supply regular Ukrainian forces.
The documentary is filmed in late-April-to-mid-May. No crops are being grown in the fields, as leaves are still forming on trees. This was done before any large-scale US military aid began arriving.
The video doesn’t make any claim that only 30% Western weapons are made it into military units. The 30% quote doesn’t appear in the CBS article on the documentary, and RT only mentions it when it quotes the CBS promo. Ohman made the 30% figure in reference to his estimation of how much non-lethal assistance his NGO provides that gets to the frontlines. Below is an image that shows this. Strangely, no follow-up question asks why this is so and where the other 70% ends up, though, were I forced to guess, I’d say that part of the problem is that Blue Yellow doesn’t deliver supplies to units; they deliver them to civilian cut-outs who make the final delivery (this was at 6:50 into the documentary).
— streiff (@streiffredstate) August 8, 2022
Blue Yellow responded to CBS’s documentary.
The @CBSNewsThe report was shot 8 weeks after the start of war. These things have changed. Any information that is misused in antiUkraine contexts by entities while an genocidal war being waged against them #Ukraine by Russia in a terrorist state fashion, is evil & puts blood on their hands. pic.twitter.com/bfwvBYPHfB
— Blue Yellow for Ukraine 🇱🇹🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@BlueYellowUKR) August 6, 2022
The documentary does not interview anyone who has been involved with weapons transfers. But they manage to interview Donatella Rova, Senior Crisis Adviser at Amnesty International.
My argument was not about who/whatever received/authorized weapons to be sold/gifted/authorised, but about state responsibility. CBS did not tell me when this documentary would be published. You can find out more about this on Twitter.
— Donatella Rovera (@DRovera) August 7, 2022
This documentary focused on the distribution of non-lethal military weapons (such as body armor, helmets, and drones) to Ukrainian provisional military units. The documentary does not focus on weapons, ammunition or the Ukrainian army. CBS can answer this question about why the Ukrainian military was promoted that way.
The episode does raise a fair question. Is it possible for donor countries to track how much military aid is provided to Ukraine? Amnesty International’s representative correctly pointed out that the weapon producers are responsible for their weapons. Germany managed to prevent the Leopard 2 main combat tank users from sending them to Ukraine by doing this. It is still a fierce war, in which large numbers of weapons are being lost or captured daily. Moreover, these weapons are at least as much Russia’s property as Ukraine’s.
Ukraine hosted donor nations in July to establish processes to make sure their weaponry made its way into the Ukrainian Army. They also created a commission for monitoring weapons transfers. US Army Security Assistance Command in Ukraine has a Brigadier-General Garrick Harmon as its head. Weapons and aid are being managed according to NATO’s LOGFAS system.
Europol investigated black market in arms from Ukraine. They found evidence of weapons smuggling, and the Ukrainian government fully cooperates. RT (lolgf) has carried out an “investigation” of arms on the “dark web.” No weapons changed hand, and no evidence presented that they had been diverted from supply channels and not abandoned or captured.
It is easy to steal equipment that flows into war zones. In France between 1945 and 1946 entire trains of US supplies were taken and sold to the dark market. It is necessary to establish systems that ensure lethal aid can be tracked down. It did little to advance the cause, and it was severely damaged by CBS’s documentary.
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