On January 18, a helicopter crashed in a residential area in the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv resulting in the death of 14 people including a minor, the country’s interior minister Denys Monastyrsky, and his deputy. According to the BBC, this is the deadliest incident involving high-profile casualty since the invasion of the nation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has launched a thorough investigation into the cause of this tragedy.
Following this incident, a video has been circulating on social media which shows a helicopter exploding and bursting into flames as it tries to land. Users have shared this video with a claim of it being visuals of the recent Ukrainian crash.
Twitter user Niharika Sharma tweeted this video with the aforementioned claim. The tweet has more than 195,000 views at the moment. The video has gone viral.
16 people including Home Minister died due to helicopter crash in #Kyiv!
Back to Back” #HelicopterCrash #Ukraine #DenysMonastyrsky #UkraineWar pic.twitter.com/NvqOM5YJjb
— Niharika Sharma (@IamNiharika12) January 18, 2023
Another Twitter user named Aditi Arora tweeted this video with the exact claim.
16 people including Home Minister died due to helicopter crash in #Kyiv!
Back to Back” #HelicopterCrash #Ukraine #DenysMonastyrsky #UkraineWar #LoveIslandUK pic.twitter.com/DmN9ISlfPA
— ADITI ARORA 💯% Follow Back. (@IamAditi999) January 18, 2023
The video has been shared multiple times on Twitter (1, 2, 3, 4).
Fact Check
We broke down the video into key-frames using InVid. By reverse-searching one of its frames, we were able to find the video in the DBKF database which led us to an article by the Aviation Safety Network, an independent initiative that records information on aviation accidents.
According to this report, the aircraft in the video was a Mi-8 type helicopter that crashed during a demo flight at an exhibition in Gelendzhik, Russia. The incident dates back to September 2014.
Several Russian news agencies, such as NTV and TASS, reported on the crash caused by leaking fuel. The video of the accident in its entirety is also available on YouTube.
Hence, it can be said that the viral video is unrelated to the recent Ukrainian crash that killed senior officials of the government. In fact, the video is of a Mi-8 helicopter crash in Russia from the year 2014.
Vansh Shah is an intern with Alt News.
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