What You Need to Know: Recent misinformation claims by the Kremlin suggest Russian forces have destroyed American-made F-16s supplied to Ukraine. One widely shared image, posted by the Russian Embassy in South Africa, showed a destroyed F-16 marked with Ukrainian insignia.

-However, the image was actually from a 2019 U.S. Air Force crash, not a Ukrainian aircraft. Other reports from pro-Kremlin media claimed Ukraine lost F-16s in missile strikes, but these have been debunked by Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation.

-As part of its ongoing propaganda campaign, Russia continues to spread false narratives about its success in the war, making it harder to discern fact from fiction.

Kremlin Misinformation – Russia Has Repeatedly Claimed F-16 Shot Down in Ukraine

Reports circulated late last week that an American-made F-16 Fighting Falcon supplied by a NATO nation to Ukraine had been shot down.

The Russian Embassy in South Africa shared an image that showed a destroyed F-16 with Ukrainian insignia on its tail, with the caption, "When you ask Ukrainian pilots where their F-16 are." The post has since been deleted, but not before a community was added, "The photo shows a USAF F-16 that crashed in 2019," and provided links to the articles about the crashed aircraft.

An archived version is still online.

According to a report from Newsweek, the photo was actually of a Fighting Falcon that had been destroyed following a crash in May 2019. That crash was due to a failure with its hydraulics system and 13 people were injured in the incident.

The aircraft was also in service with the U.S. Air Force, not the Ukrainian Air Force. It is unclear if the Russian Embassy or someone else had doctored the photo to add the Ukrainian identification markings.

This is just the most recent claim that Russian forces have destroyed an F-16. One of the F-16s supplied earlier this summer was indeed lost in August, but pilot error – not the Kremlin's air defenses – was likely to blame for the mishap.

Just days before the Russian Embassy in South Africa shared the doctored image of the destroyed F-16, several pro-Kremlin media sites also reported that Kyiv lost several Fighting Falcons on the ground after an airfield was targeted in a missile strike.

Russian bloggers who regularly post updates from the ongoing conflict claimed on the Telegram social messaging app that as many as four F-16s were hit during an attack on the Starokostyantyniv airfield in western Ukraine.

The popular Fighterbomber channel on Telegram was among the blogger channels that made the claim, but according to the Kyiv Post, "Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) categorically denied the Russian reports on its Telegram channel saying they were 'fakes.'"

Still, another image made the rounds on Chinese social media last that that purported to be of an F-16 shot down over the Black Sea. That post claimed the Russian Aerospace Forces targeted a U.S. Air Force Fighting Falcon after the American pilot refused to "obey Russian orders."

In the latter case, it was determined to be a Russian MiG-29 that was destroyed in an aerial collision during an Airshow in July 1993! It wasn't even the correct type of combat aircraft.

The First Casualty

The truth has long been seen as the "first casualty" of war, and Russia has largely created a narrative that differs from reality when it comes to the war in Ukraine – downplaying its losses and hyping up those of Kyiv's forces.

Russia has used the destruction of Western-supplied main battle tanks (MBTs) and others platforms in an attempt to bolster support for the conflict domestically but also to convince Americans and those in other nations that have provided support that Ukraine can't win.

The late Sir Winston Churchill is credited with stating, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to gets its pants on." The British politician and war hero made that statement in an era when news also didn't travel so quickly.

Social media has enabled misinformation and even disinformation to rapidly make the rounds faster than ever before – and that continues to make it harder than ever to tell fact from fiction, or in this case, blogger propaganda.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: [email protected].

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