Fake News: Russian Navy Did NOT Find Extraterrestrial Spaceship Under Arctic Ice

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Russian Navy Did NOT Find Extraterrestrial Spaceship Under Arctic Ice

Did the Russian Navy find an extraterrestrial spaceship under the Arctic Ice? No, that's not true: a story making that claim does not point to any verifiable sources and the photo used to illustrate it actually shows the wreckage of a U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter jet, probably one that crashed into the sea in 2002.

The story recently appeared as an article published by Alien Blog on May 29, 2019 titled "Russian Navy Finds Extraterrestrial Spaceship Under Arctic Ice" (archived here) which opened:

Vladimir Prikhodko is the director of operations in the Russian navy. He recently said there was a joint operation between the United States, Germany, China and Russia in order to discover evidence of aliens. Besides that, the joint operation is also responsible for finding planets similar to Earth that could sustain life. Vladimir Prikhodko believes that in the beginning we should focus on underground, because there could be buried a lot of evidence. Since the beginning of the Second World War, Russia has dedicated itself to searching for extraterrestrial life. It seems that lately the Russian army made a lot of colossal discoveries demonstrating the existence of alien beings. One of these discoveries is the wreck of a UFO that was found in a deep pit of Antarctic ice. Apparently, near this alien ship there were caves where a lot of ancient glyphs were discovered.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

Russian Navy Finds Extraterrestrial Spaceship Under Arctic Ice

Vladimir Prikhodko is the director of operations in the Russian navy. He recently said there was a joint operation between the United States, Germany, China and Russia in order to discover evidence of aliens. Besides that, the joint operation is also responsible for finding planets similar to Earth that could sustain life. Vladimir Prikhodko believes...

This is the supposed photo of the "spaceship":

extraterrestrial-spaceship-arctic.jpg

We found no trace of a Vladimir Prikhodko having anything to do with the Russian Navy. There is a (now deceased) French athlete by that name and also an actor listed on IMDB.

And the photo is definitely not an alien spaceship. A Flickr photo from 2002 appears to show the original, labeled F-14, Crete (archived here):

F14 - Crete

Explore Removethatnow's photos on Flickr. Removethatnow has uploaded 1473 photos to Flickr.

You can clearly see U.S. Navy markings on the left wing that have been blurred on the manipulated photo. The big circular thing in the middle seems to have been added too, along with the "shadowy figure" on the right.

There was indeed an F-14 crash near Crete in 2002:

Naval Aviator Killed, Another Injured in Eastern Mediterranean Crash

Story Number: NNS020304-07 Release Date: 3/4/2002 1:00:00 PM NORFOLK, Va. (NNS) -- The Navy has identified the crew members of an F-14 Tomcat that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea March 2, after launching from USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67) in the Eastern Mediterranean. Killed was the pilot, Lt.

An analysis by Isaak Koi (archived here) claims the manipulated image was created for a fictional video named "The Orion Conspiracy".

Koi UFO Video 070 - IsaacKoi

Koi UFO Video 070: F14B Tomcat / UFO Recovery ("The Orion Conspiracy") [DEBUNKED] Koi UFO Video 070 ("The Orion Conspiracy") shows various still photographs (including the one below), apparently as part of a slide show in

It is highly unlikely real aliens would fly around in U.S. Navy jets so we rate this claim false.

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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