Unrelated old photo shared as a recent picture showing coffins of US soldiers who died in the Russia-Ukraine war
A photo of coffins draped with US flags inside a plane is being shared on social media with the statement, “Patriot missile battery operators being sent home from Kiev”. The post claims that the photo shows the coffins of US soldiers who died in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Recent photo showing the coffins of US soldiers who died while fighting for Ukraine in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Fact: The image shared in the post shows an old photo of caskets bearing the remains of crew members whose Black Hawk helicopter crashed on a training mission in Kuwait in 2005. The U.S. Department of Defence published this image in April 2005. The image shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same photo was found published on the Getty Images website in April 2005. The description of the photo states, “Caskets bearing the remains of crew members whose Black Hawk helicopter crashed on a night training mission in Kuwait are shown onboard an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft at Ramstein Air Force Base in this photo released April 28, 2005 by the Pentagon”.
The U.S. Department of Defence published this image in April 2005. The image shows the caskets bearing the remains of crew members whose helicopter crashed on a training mission in Kuwait in 2005. Reporting about the incident, several news websites published articles in 2005. They can be seen here and here. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the image shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
To sum it up, an unrelated old photo is now shared as a recent picture showing coffins of US soldiers who died in the Russia-Ukraine war.