Video of Russian planes misrepresented as helicopter killing Kenya’s military chief

Kenyan defense chief General Francis Ogolla and nine other senior officers were killed in a helicopter crash in mid-April. Following the fatal accident, a video emerged online claiming that the helicopter was involved in the incident while it was still in the air. But this claim is incorrect: the video was posted online before the crash and shows a Ka-52 alligator helicopter, owned by the Russian military.

The video has been shared more than 3,300 times on TikTok since it was posted on April 18, 2024.

Screenshot of the fake message, taken on May 6, 2024

It shows a helicopter in flight, firing missiles.

“Chopper with CDF Ogolla crashes in cheptulel west pokot (sick),” reads a text overlay.

The clip was also shared on Facebook and YouTube.

Ogolla, a trained fighter pilot, died on April 18, 2024, when his helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff in a remote forest area in northwestern Kenya, 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the capital Nairobi (archived here).

Last April, he was appointed head of the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF).

The four-star general joined the KDF in 1984 and rose through the ranks to command the Kenyan Air Force in 2018, a position he held for three years before being appointed CDF.

But the video circulating on social media does not reveal which helicopter was involved in his death.

Russian war helicopter

Using the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify, AFP Fact Check performed a reverse image search on key frames from the images. We discovered it was posted online more than two weeks before Ogola was killed.

The video, described as depicting a “Russian Ka-52 attack,” was uploaded to YouTube on March 31, 2024.

It was also shared on March 31, 2024 on an Instagram account called ‘Sky Fighters Club’, with the caption: ‘Russian Air Force Ka-52 Alligator firing unguided missiles in ballistic trajectory, somewhere in Ukraine.’

The CommandPost, a military and war news site, uploaded the video to its YouTube channel (archived here) and said it showed “close-up footage of Russian Ka-52 helicopter shows during this so-called Russia-Ukraine war.”

The website told AFP Fact Check that the clip “shows a Russian war helicopter flying over Ukraine”.

However, we were unable to independently verify the exact location of the video.

Bell Huey helicopter

According to Kenyan media, the helicopter involved in Ogola’s death was a Bell UH-1H Huey II helicopter, a multi-purpose aircraft used for a variety of purposes including troop transport and search and rescue (archived here).

In 2016, the United States donated six Bell helicopters to Kenya (archived here).