Old footage of Ukrainian forces destroying Russian KA-52 helicopter shared as recent

By: Rajini KG
July 31 2023

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Context

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing since 2022. Recently, according to Newsweek, a Russian Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter was shot down by Ukrainian forces on July 25, 2023. A Twitter account (archive here) shared a video of a helicopter attack on July 26, 2023, and wrote, "The moment a Russian KA-52 attack helicopter was hit yesterday." The video is a long shot of a missile hitting a helicopter from above while airborne. The tweet had 231,800 likes and 3,119 likes while writing this fact check. The same video was shared by other users on X. The archive of the posts can be found here and here.

However, the video is old and does not show the recent attack.

In Fact

We found that the video is from 2022. Anton Gerashchenko, the advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, shared the same video on December 6, 2022. The caption reads, "A new video of Russian Ka-52 helicopter being destroyed by Ukrainian Forces." 

On December 5, 2022, Ukrainian Air Force's official Twitter account posted a 34-second video of a Russian KA-52 helicopter attack. The caption stated that on December 4, 2022, around 2 p.m., the Dnipro anti-aircraft missile brigade of the Air Command "East" shot down the Russian KA-52 helicopter. The viral visuals can be seen at the timestamp of 0:10 seconds. After the missile attack, the helicopter falls to the ground, and the smoke after the attack matches the viral video. 

A Telegram channel called posted the longer version of the helicopter attack on December 4, 2022, and wrote, "Today, at about 14:00, a Russian Ka-52 helicopter was shot down. Beautiful." This confirms the viral video is an edited clip of December 4 attack.  

New Voice of Ukraine, a Ukrainian news website, also cited the longer version of the attack and stated that on December 4, 2022, anti-aircraft gunners shot down a KA-52 chopper, also known as an Alligator helicopter. The Telegraph also uploaded a video of the incident from a different angle on its YouTube channel on December 5, 2022. "This is the moment Ukrainian anti-aircraft troops shoot down a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter. The footage shows the Russian attack helicopter flying low in the distance before it is suddenly hit," the description reads. 

The Verdict

A video of a Ukrainian missile destroying a Russian KA-52 helicopter in 2022 has been falsely shared as recent. Therefore, we have marked this claim as misleading.