Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 22/8/2025; Author: Amar Karađuz
A video allegedly showing American F-22 fighter jets drawing a five-pointed star as a welcome gesture for Vladimir Putin at a meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska is not authentic. Analysis of the weather at the time of the meeting and details from the footage shows that the video was actually recorded earlier in Chile.
U.S. President Donald Trump met with the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15, 2025. At the summit, they discussed solutions for ending the war that Russia launched in Ukraine in 2022.
Two days later, a video was published on Telegram showing fighter jets “drawing” a five-pointed star in the sky. The post claimed that after flyovers by B-2 and F-35 jets, F-22 fighters drew the star above the base where the two presidents met, as a gesture of welcome for Vladimir Putin. The post also claimed that U.S. media did not show this gesture in their coverage of the Alaska summit.
What U.S. media didn’t show from Alaska.
After B-2 and F-35 flights, F-22 fighters “drew” a star in the sky above Elmendorf Air Base specially for the President of Russia.
The post was viewed nearly 1.500 times, and the same post was also found on Facebook. In the meantime, this post has become unavailable.
What are the Facts?
The claim that F-22 fighters drew a star in the sky over Alaska for Vladimir Putin is false. These claims and the video shared alongside them originated from pro-Russian portals and social media profiles. They were fact-checked by the Ukrainian fact-checking portal StopFake.
The video, allegedly showing Putin’s welcome, depicts clear skies with only a few clouds. However, authentic footage of the U.S. and Russian presidents immediately after their planes landed at Elmendorf-Richardson Air Base shows the sky over Alaska was cloudy (link, link).
During the leaders’ meeting, a ceremonial flyover by B-2 bombers and F-35 fighters, mentioned in the Telegram post, did occur. Footage of this flyover, published on YouTube by New Yorker, also shows heavy cloud cover.
In a video of Trump and Putin on the base runway, published on a YouTube channel Fox 13 Tampa Bay, the presidents can be seen exiting the plane, meeting and shaking hands, and then walking toward a podium where they shook hands again.
On the footage, in that moment (archived here), the sound of the B-2 bombers and F-35 fighters can be heard. Soon after the handshake on the podium, Trump and Putin moved toward a car that took them to the meeting location. No additional sky performance took place. Until the end of the video of the presidents on the runway, the weather did not change, nor did it become clear as depicted in the Telegram video.
In response to an identical English-language post, a user on X shared the result of a geolocation investigation of the video, which is also shared on Telegram. Based on the position of trees in the background of the runway, it was concluded that the footage was recorded at the runway of an aeroclub in Rancagua, Chile.
StopFake also noted that the scene resembles a performance by the Chilean Air Force aerobatic team, Halcones, at the FIDAE 2022 air show in Santiago (near Rancagua). Footage from that event shows the same maneuver of drawing a five-pointed star, suggesting that the “welcome for Putin” is actually recycled material from Chile.
The claim that U.S. media ignored this welcome gesture in the sky over Alaska is nonsensical, as it never happened. According to the facts from this analysis, the earliest post of the video claiming to show F-22 fighter jets drawing a star in the sky as a welcome gesture for Vladimir Putin in Alaska is rated as fake news. Other posts sharing this video are rated as spreading fake news.
