Every organization doing these sorts of reliability checks is politically motivated, and it’s going to have a strong bias.

Sputnik does indeed have a tabloidy bend to it, but sometimes it has actual reporting as well. This is why I keep saying that it’s best to evaluate the information on its own merit rather then perseverating over what rating some org comes up with.

This particular story is credible because it aligns with what we know from lots of other western sources.