Chilean Air Force video falsely shared as 'US fighter jet tribute to Putin'

"This is what Western media won't show during the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska," reads a Thai-language X post shared on August 17, 2025.

The post includes a video that shows five aircrafts drawing a star with their jet trails, with a caption that says: "US Air Force F-22 Raptors flew in a star formation to honour President Vladimir Putin."

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Screenshot of the false X post taken on August 27, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The same video was shared alongside similar claims online in multiple languages including Greek and English.

The posts circulated after Trump and Putin held a high-stakes Alaska summit on August 15 to discuss the war in Ukraine (archived link).

White House envoy Steve Witkoff said both leaders agreed to provide "robust security guarantees" to Ukraine, despite the summit failing to yield any breakthroughs towards a ceasefire (archived link).

But the video in fact shows a routine exercise in Chile, filmed days before the summit.

A Community Note attached to one of the false posts linked the footage to a Spanish post on Instagram published on August 9, 2025, which predates the Alaska summit (archived link).

Parts of the Spanish caption reads: "May we never be without our star in the sky".

The user also tagged the official Instagram account of Chilean Air Force's aerobatics team in their August 9 post.

Subsequent searches found this X post, saying the video was filmed at Club Aereo in Rancagua, a city to the south of the Chilean capital Santiago (archived link).

Using coordinates mentioned in the post, AFP geolocated the clip to a photo sphere image uploaded to Google Maps (archived link).

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Screenshot comparison between the false post (left) and the Rancagua location from Google maps, with elements made by AFP to highlight similarities

A spokesperson of the Chilean Air Force aerobatic team confirmed with AFP that the video shows a unit called "Halcones" or Falcons from the Chilean Air Force. The clip was filmed during a training session in Rancagua  in central Chile on August 7 (archived link).

In an emailed response on August 21, they said the star formation was a nod to the "Chile Lone Star" featured on the national flag (archived link).

According to the spokesperson, the routine utilized five GB-1 aircraft and the team has been active since 1981.

The team had also published more clips from the same training week on their Instagram account (archived links here and here).

AFP has debunked misinformation about the Alaska summit (archived link).