Video of Russian aircraft misrepresented as helicopter that killed Kenya’s military chief

Kenya’s defence chief, General Francis Ogolla, and nine other senior officers were killed in a helicopter crash in mid-April. Following the deadly accident, a video surfaced online claiming to show the chopper involved in the incident while it was still airborne. But the claim is false: the clip was posted online before the crash and shows a Russian military-owned Ka-52 alligator helicopter.

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

It shows a helicopter in flight, firing what appears to be rockets.

“Chopper carrying CDF Ogolla crashes in cheptulel west pokot (sic),” 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 went down shortly after takeoff in a remote forested area of northwestern Kenya, 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the capital Nairobi (archived here).

He was appointed Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) last April.

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

But the clip doing rounds on social media does not show the helicopter involved in his death.

Russian war helicopter

Using the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify, AFP Fact Check conducted a reverse image search on keyframes from the footage. We found it was posted online more than two weeks before Ogola was killed.

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

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

The CommandPost, a military and war news site, uploaded the video to its YouTube channel (archived here), saying it showed a “close-up Footage of Russian Ka-52 Helicopter Shows off during this so-called Russia Ukraine War”.

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

However, we were unable to independently verify the video’s precise location.

Bell Huey helicopter

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

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