Clip shows repatriation of US service member who died in World War II, not 'US soldier killed in Ukraine'

"The remains of US servicemen and women killed in action in the Middle East and Ukraine are being brought back to the United States," read part of the simplified Chinese caption to a video posted on X on November 9, 2024.

It added: "Did the US go to war? Why are there remains of American servicemen?"

The video shows a coffin draped in the American flag being carried by an honour guard from an aeroplane to a hearse.

Overlaid text on the video reads, "A US serviceman who died in action in Ukraine and was shipped home".

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Screenshot of the false X post, captured on November 29, 2024

The same video was shared hundreds of times in other X posts, including in Arabic and English. 

Kyiv has received tens of billions of dollars in direct military and humanitarian aid since Moscow's invasion in February 2022, but its Western partners -- including the United States -- have not sent troops to fight in Ukraine (archived link).

President Volodymyr Zelensky has openly invited foreigners to join an "international legion" to fight against the Russians, and the Russian military said it had killed 5,962 foreign fighters in Ukraine since the start of the war, Russian state news agency TASS reported in March 2024 (archived links here and here).

While Americans have died in Ukraine and the United States has said it aims to send contractors there to maintain military equipment, the clip circulating online in fact shows the repatriation of a US serviceman who died in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines during World War II (archived link).

Repatriation ceremony

A fire truck seen in the background of the falsely shared video bears markings that read "MS-140", which a keyword search on Google showed matches those on an engine belonging to the Ontario Fire Department in California (archived link).

Separately, one user who shared the same video on X claimed they filmed it from their American Airlines flight that landed at the Ontario International Airport on November 9 (archived links here and here).

Subsequent reverse image and keyword searches led to similar videos and images from an organisation called Honoring Our Fallen, which provides help to the families of military service members and first responders who have died (archived link).

The founder and director of Honoring Our Fallen, Laura Herzog, told AFP in a November 22 email that the video circulating online showed staff from the organisation.

She said the video showed a casket containing the remains of US Army Air Forces Private 1st Class Harry M. Seiff, "a World War II hero that was being repatriated on November 9 to Ontario and has been laid to rest at Los Angeles National Cemetery".

Herzog also later forwarded a video of the repatriation, which was uploaded to the Honoring Our Fallen Facebook page on November 24 (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the Honoring Our Fallen footage (right), with similarities highlighted by AFP:

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Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the Honoring Our Fallen footage (right)

According to the United States Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), Seiff was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and died in a prisoner-of-war camp on November 14, 1942 at the age of 23 (archived link).

Using dental and anthropological analysis as well as circumstantial evidence, DPAA scientists were able to verify Seiff's previously unidentified remains.

AFP previously debunked a similar claim that falsely stated a photo showed the coffins of "British soldiers killed in the Ukraine war" here.