[rsj_hn]

British Military Intelligence is a credible source in the same way the Ukraine MOD is a credible source - they are participants in the conflict and have a propaganda mission to fulfill. In that case, you must believe that Russia was shelling its own nuclear power plant and that a Ukrainian woman destroyed a drone with a pickle jar.

If that's credible to you, knock yourself out, I am not going to try to convince you, but it's not credible to people in most of the world, who would consider, for example, non-aligned sources such as Indian/Mexican/Brazilian to be neutral, rather than looking to nations that are arming/subsidizing one side of this conflict as being neutral.

I have lived through a lot of wars, and seen a lot of cheerleading for wars, especially in Western media. I remember the stories of Iraquis taking incubators out of Kuwait, of viagra being given to Libya's soldiers to rape women, etc. Western media and government institutions are often a spin machine for war - not all, there are anti-war outlets and reporters doing good work, but when you are talking about ministry of defense statements, you don't look for nations waging proxy wars as sources of reliable info about the conflict in question.

I would apply the same level of credibility to Russian MoD statements as I would to British MoD.

[celsoazevedo]

> but it's not credible to people in most of the world, who would consider, for example, Indian/Mexican/Brazilian media as being credible, but not Western media as they are influenced by governments that are arming/subsidizing one side of this conflict.

If we apply the same thinking to those countries, why would the Indian media be credible when they rely on Russia for a lot of military equipment and now for cheap oil? Or Brazil when they buy Russian helicopters?

I understand what you're saying [the original version of your comment], but it's hard to find credible sources when everyone has reasons to side with one side or the other. Who to trust?

[rsj_hn]

India/Brazil/Mexico trade with Russia for some goods and with the US for others. That's what makes them non-aligned -- they do business with both sides. By the way, this is like 2/3 of the global population, so you don't need to look far to find non-aligned nations.

This idea that if you are not sanctioning Russia you are not "neutral" -- basically a "with us or against us" view is one that non-aligned nations have historically rejected, and frankly it's not one that I subscribe to, either.

You may be interested in listening to the speech that Indonesia just gave at the G20 summit, condemning the West for this "with us or against us" attitude and refusing to take sides. Indonesia is also non-aligned, and I would give much more credence to their MoD reports than to anything coming out of the five eyes/NATO orbit, simply because Indonesia is not pushing for any outcome, nor are they trying to generate support in their domestic populations for aid packages to Ukraine. They literally have no dog in this fight, and so are much more credible.

[celsoazevedo]

Just because a country is non-aligned, it doesn't mean it's a credible source.

For example, India relies on Russia because they have lots of Soviet equipment. This is more than just simple trading and obviously they'll think twice before making their main weapons supplier angry. Knowing this, you should question the credibility of any report they make, after all it's not in their interest to have a bad relationship with Russia.

You mentioned Indonesia. Sure, maybe non-aligned... but are they credible or impartial when they have a strong strong military cooperation with Russia? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia%E2%80%93Russia_relat...

From the list of non-aligned countries you mentioned on the comment I replied to, maybe Mexico would be a more credible source on what's happening in Ukraine? Not sure, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say.

The sanctions, the "with us or against us", etc, is a different question. What I'm trying to say is it's not in the interest of some of the non-aligned countries to be impartial when talking about this conflict. They are credible as anyone else.