The photo shared online has nothing to do with the Russian-Ukrainian war. It shows the coffins of British soldiers who died in a plane crash in Afghanistan back in 2006.
Social media users share photos of coffins covered with British flags. The description of the photos falsely claims that these are British soldiers who allegedly died fighting against Russia in Ukraine.
“A group of British tourists is returning from the Ukrainian segment of the special operation zone (the Russian-Ukrainian war – ed.)… As they say, they “had enough of hunting Russians for their whole lives”… “Collateral losses” in US terminology,” users caption the image.
After the spread of such information, StopFake decided to check whether the photo really showed houses with British soldiers who died in the war in Ukraine. As it turned out, the image has nothing to do with the Russian-Ukrainian war.
A search of the image using the TinEye resource showed that this photo was used even before the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. By sorting the search results by date, you can see that the photo has been actively used or started to be indexed by the search engine since 2008.
However, the photo itself was taken even earlier. Searching for news with this image in credible media sources, you can find information that the photo really does show coffins with the bodies of British soldiers. Yet they did not die in Ukraine. The description of the photo on the International Business Times (UK) news site claims that these are the bodies of soldiers who died in Afghanistan in 2006.
“The home flags of the 14 servicemen who died in the RAF Nimrod crash in Afghanistan are being flown back to the UK. On September 2, 2006, a British Air Force Nimrod crashed, killing 14 servicemen, which was the greatest loss of Great Britain since the Falklands War,” says the description on the International Business Times (UK) website.
The BBC’s old website also has this photo in a report on the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in a plane crash in Afghanistan on September 12, 2006.
This is not the first time when social media users and propaganda spread false information about the British military in Ukraine. Previously, StopFake refuted the information that Britain is allegedly sending troops to Ukraine to seize Crimea.
