Vladimir Putin’s plane escorted by IAF jets? 8-year-old video falsely viral

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India on December 4 and 5, 2025, for the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit. A video has since gone viral on social media, showing Putin seated in a jet and escorted by several fighter jets, from one of which the video had been recorded. The video is being linked to Putin’s recent visit to India and shared with the claim that Putin’s plane was being escorted by Indian Air Force fighter jets as it entered Indian airspace.

Mithilesh Kumar Thakur, general secretary of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, shared the video on Facebook and wrote, “Indian Air Force fighter jets escort President Putin’s plane through Indian skies. A magnificent symbol of trust, partnership, and decades-old friendship.”

X user Baba Banaras, who shares communal disinformation and pro-BJP propaganda on a regular basis, posted the video and wrote that Indian Air Force fighter jets were escorting Russian President Putin’s plane as it entered Indian airspace. (Archive link)

Several other X users made similar claims while sharing the video. Among them were verified users Arun Yadav Kosli and Jitendra Pratap Singh. The latter, who is followed by Prime Minister Modi on X, shares pro-BJP propaganda and misinformation on a regular basis.

Fact Check

First, a relevant keyword search did not reveal any news reports about Indian Air Force fighter jets escorting Russian President Putin.

Then, a reverse image search with key frames from the viral video led us to a video uploaded on a YouTube channel on December 12, 2017. The caption, in Russian, says, “Su-30SM escorting Putin’s plane through the sky.” This clearly indicates that the video is approximately eight-year old and has no connection to Putin’s recent visit to India.

Looking for more information on this, we found an article published in French on the website of Russia’s state news agency, Sputnik, on December 12, 2017.

According to this report, two Russian fighter jets escorted Vladimir Putin’s plane after it took off from Hmeimim Air Base in Syria for Egypt. It also reported that Russian television aired a video showing Russian Aerospace Troops escorting President Vladimir Putin’s Tupolev Tu-214PU aircraft in Syrian airspace after his surprise visit to Hmeimim Air Base. In the video, Putin is seen looking out the left window of his plane as two fighter jets, possibly Sukhoi Su-27s, escort the Tu-214 presidential plane.

The YouTube channel from which the video (the same one that is now viral) was taken in an article on Sputnik is now defunct. However, the video is still accessible in an archived version of the article. Below, we have included a screen recording of the video:

To sum up, several users shared an eight-year-old video of Vladimir Putin’s plane being escorted by Russian fighter jets with the false claim that those were Indian Air Force fighter jets during his December 2025 visit to India.