Debunking Russian fakes. No, American pilot didn’t die in Russian missile strike on Khmelnytskyi Oblast 

On September 26, the Russian military launched a missile strike on Starokostiantynivska hromada in Khmelnytskyi Oblast. Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels shared the news that a soldier of the American Air Force died in that missile strike. Our fact-checking department looked into this claim. 

What happened?  

In the aftermath of the Russian strike on Khmelnytskyi Oblast, the Russian Telegram channel Военный обозреватель(“Military observer,” archive) and Кот Костян – официальный канал (“Kostian cat, official channel,” archive), and Медведь (“Bear,” archive) spread the news about the death of the American pilot in this strike. Authors supposedly found out this information from the pilot’s wife, Melanie Malwin-Parker, who writes on social media.

“STEVEN IS DEAD. My husband is dead. Fucking Russia and fucking Ukrainell! He died because of all this crap with the program for foreign instructors. I don’t know why he agreed… He hasn’t been home for months. And now he’s just gone. And I don’t understand HOW they’re going to get my husband back from that damn Starokostiantyniv?? And who will return the other dead men to their families here?? Someone’s upset about these five fucking F-16s. You’re fucking idiots. Enough. Our people are dying in who knows where, and for what?”

Telegram channels write that this message “confirms” the destruction of five F-16s in a Russian missile strike. 

This message was reshared by several Russian media (1, 2, 3, 4 and others). 

Analysis 

First, we’ve tried to find Melanie Malwin-Parke’s personal Facebook page. The screenshot in the Telegram post doesn’t directly point to the post being published on Facebook, but its design and geolocation mark are similar to Facebook’s. We didn’t find Melanie Malwin-Parke’s page via Facebook internal search or via searching for her name in Google. 

We’ve checked the rating of web visibility via a tool that helps establish whether the account on social media is fake, and received a 0,67% result. Mentions of both Melanie Malwin-Parker and Steven Parker’s names are present only in posts and comments related to this Telegram post. 

Then, we analyzed the photo of the supposedly dead pilot. We used a reverse search and couldn’t find photos of such a person. The photo is of low quality, typical for AI-generated images: the man’s left eye and right ear also lack realistic form. 

We also checked the official Facebook page of Altus Air Force Base, which was tagged in Melanie’s posts as a geolocation. We didn’t find any mentions of Melanie Malwin-Parker or Steven Parker on their page. 

We continued the search for Steven Parker. We assumed that he might have served in the 97 Aeromobile Wing based in Altus and decided to search for them on the Altus Air Force Base’s website. We didn’t find any matches by this name or surname. 

We also checked the official website of American Air Force and found a match there: Brig. Gen. Steven B. Parker.  

But his photo on the page of the Air Force’s website doesn’t match the photo in the Telegram post. 

The information on the website reads, “Brig. Gen. Steven B. Parker is the Deputy Commander, Twenty-Second Air Force, Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Georgia. Twenty-Second Air Force has command supervision of the Air Force Reserve’s tactical air mobility operations and other vital mission sets to include distinguished visitor airlift, undergraduate pilot training, flight test operations and a highly mobile civil engineering response force.”

So, we didn’t see find any confirmation of the wife or pilot’s identities. Let’s come back to the message that’s presented as evidence. 

Note the time of the news shared and the time of “Melanie” writing her post. Telegram channel “Military observer” (Военний обозреватель) posted about the dead pilot on 2:42 p.m. on September 26. At the moment of the publication, the wife’s post have been published for at least four hours. Let’s assume that, in Kyiv time, she published that post between 12:00 p.m. and 1 p.m. on September 26. 

(Also note that the same screenshot with the “published 4 hours ago” mark is used in all the news and Telegram channels; no link to the post is provided.) 

Next, let’s look at the messages from Ukraine’s officials: Ukraine’s Air Force and local authorities. Ukraine’s Air Force reported about three Russian ballistic missiles, Kh-47 “Kinzhal,” being launched toward Starokostiantyniv in Khmelnytskyi Oblast from 10 to 11 a.m. 

At 12 p.m., Khmelnytskyi Oblast Governor Serhii Taran reported that Russian missiles hit the infrastructure objects in the region. 

That means that the woman was supposedly told that her pilot husband died during the same hour that the consequences of the Russian strike on Starokostiantynivska hromada have been reported. The authors of the Telegram channel think the woman in Oklahoma would receive this information (about his husband’s death, the number of jets destroyed, and other supposed casualties of the strike) that quickly after the attack. Also, the Oklahoma time zone was eight hours behind Ukraine’s time (it’s seven hours now) on September 26, so it would have been early morning for her.

Conclusion: Fake

Author: Olha Yakovleva