Images of destruction and war are not hard to find as Russia continues its attack in Ukraine, but not all the ones appearing on social media show what they describe.
The caption on a May 5 Facebook post says a video shows “Ukrainian forces shoot down Russian plane carrying hundreds (of) troops on Kyiv airport.”
The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It uses old images.
Ukraine did shoot down a Russian transport plane with hundreds of troops on board early in the war. But the footage in the Facebook video is not current and is not from Ukraine; it is from an August 2021 plane crash in Moscow.
Beginning at the 5-second mark in the Facebook video, a plane with flames coming out of it flies through the sky, passing what appears to be a communications tower, then nose-dives to the ground. The exact same footage was released by Russian state media on Aug. 17, 2021, with a caption that said, “A prototype of the new Russian transport aircraft Il-112V crashed near Moscow.”
Media reports at the time said the Russian plane crashed during a test flight, killing three people.
The Facebook video also includes old footage from Ukraine. At the 52-second mark, soldiers are sitting side-by-side at computers, looking at radar. That footage can also be seen at the 1:52 mark in a 2019 video about the final stage of tests of anti-aircraft missile systems that was posted by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine..
And at the 59-second mark in the Facebook video, the footage of a tank is the same as the 3:21-mark in a 2014 video filmed in the Donbas region of Ukraine.
We rate the claim that this video shows recent footage of Ukrainian forces shooting down a Russian plane False.
