Old photo from Ukraine falsely linked to plane crash that killed Malawi’s vice president

Malawi’s former vice president Saulos Chilima was one of nine people killed in a plane crash in June 2024. In the wake of the tragedy, social media users shared posts with photos purporting to show the crash site. However, the claims are misleading: the widely circulated image is a photo taken in Ukraine in 2020.

“BREAKING NEWS: Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima and 9 others confirmed dead in plane crash,” said an X-Post published on June 11, 2024.

The post contains a photo of a plane crash, with soldiers apparently visible in the background.

On June 11, 2024, Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera confirmed that Chilima and eight others – one fewer than initially reported – had died in a plane crash in bad weather (archived here). Former First Lady Shanil Dzimbiri was also on board. The next day, search teams found the wreckage in a misty forest.

However, the picture in the article has no connection to the events in Malawi.

Ukraine plane

A reverse image search revealed that the image was originally taken in Ukraine in 2020 (archived here).

“Photo taken on September 26, 2020 shows the crash site of a Type 26 military aircraft in Chuguev, Kharkiv region, Ukraine,” the caption reads. The photo was taken by Sergey Starostenko for China’s Xinhua news agency.

On September 25, 2020, the An-26 military aircraft with 27 people on board crashed during a training flight while landing at a military base near Chuguev in the Kharkiv region. One person survived.

Crash in Malawi

Addressing the Malawian people, Chakwera said: “The search and rescue team has found the aircraft… completely destroyed, there are no survivors as all passengers on board were killed on impact.”

In photos provided to AFP by a member of the military rescue team, military personnel can be seen standing on a misty hillside near wreckage bearing the registration number of the Malawi Army Air Wing’s Dornier 228-202K aircraft.

One of the pictures was published by Sky News here (archived here).

The military plane carrying 51-year-old Chilima and eight other people disappeared after it was unable to land in the northern town of Mzuzu due to bad weather and was ordered to return to the capital Lilongwe (archived here).