Since I recently saw mention of “milbloggers” and Ukraine….

I’ve previously mentioned “China Insights”, a youtube channel that covers events in the PRC, and that I don’t take them at face value.  It’s annoying because some (sometimes a lot) of what they say can be independently verified through reputable news sources, but some of it can’t.  Unverifiable videos and stories makes the channel and its videos useless as a source, it needs to be 100% checked. I would like to use it because they often publish stuff first before the corporate media does.

The same goes with some of the channels posting videos about the war in Ukraine.  Some of them report things hours or days before the “official” media reports the same thing, showing parts are true.  But again, as with China Insights, some of it is never verified nor verifiable. Lack of proof makes them useless as a source.

The two I watch the most are not typical “milbloggers” (i.e. ex-military, vomiting personal ‘analysis’).  I’m not recommending them as sources, I’d suggest watching with a harshly critical and questioning eye. But frequently what they report on youtube (and report it first) matches what the corporate news reports later.

The first channel I watch is Reporting From Ukraine.  The channel creator puts the face of Lieutenant General Valerii Zaluzhnyi (reportedly the brains behind Ukraine’s strategy) on the videos, but the speaker is definitely not him and I doubt the channel is in any way official.  There are videos of Zaluzhnyi speaking in his own voice, much deeper and very different (and nothing I’ve seen says he speaks English).  I also don’t like that the channel constantly hawks merchandise.  Who knows where that money is going.  But it covered the Belgorod incursion early, before the media.

The second channel is Warthog Defense.  This one is annoying for too much “gung ho” talk and attitude, solely reporting Ukraine’s successes but not its setbacks.  Don’t be fooled by the narrated voice, it’s computer generated.  You can tell because of the mistakes in the text being read, incomplete or repeated sentences.  Two recent videos on the channel contained clips of Yevgeny Prigozhin being “interviewed”.  The same interview appeared much later on the Wall Street Journal’s channel.  If a milblogger has access to the same stuff, and gets it first, it makes me wonder what sort of access to information the channel has.