For weeks, an unknown Ukrainian fighter pilot captivated the nation and some of the world with his extraordinary battle feats, becoming a symbol of heroic resistance to Russia’s invasion that came to be emblazoned everywhere.
Now, the Ukrainian air force says the Ghost of Kyiv never existed. And although the myth is dead, war watchers said its spread raised questions over how information is processed in a war where journalists have struggled to access the front lines.
The Ghost of Kyiv’s origin is shrouded in mystery, but it was undoubtedly abetted by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who tweeted an image of a masked fighter pilot who purportedly shot down six Russian jets within hours of Moscow’s invasion.
When the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in March tweeted a video praising Maj. Stepan Tarabalka, who died during aerial combat and who was awarded a posthumous medal for courage, the internet connected the dots. As the myth of the ghost grew, so did his exploits, with the single pilot being credited with downing 40 Russian jets.
Last weekend, however, the Ukrainian Air Force Command wrote on its Facebook page that Tarabalka was not the ghost, nor had he dispatched 40 enemy aircraft. It said the Ghost of Kyiv was a “superhero legend whose character was created by Ukrainians.”
But it also offered a sense of why such myths tend to take hold during war. The Ghost of Kyiv wasn’t real, Ukraine’s air force said, but it was “rather a collective image” of the country’s pilots, who have crucially managed to prevent Russian control of the skies despite expert predictions.
But myths are persistent. The armed forces may have denied the ghost’s existence and body count, but it still raises doubts as to whether Ukraine has been exaggerating its gains in the aerial battlefield — an area where Russia should, on paper at least, have supremacy.
