The Ukrainian government also joined in. On February 27 it relayed on Twitter the story and the photo, calling the unknown pilot “a nightmare for invading Russian aircrafts.” It posted a video praising the pilot that included a clip from a combat flight simulator.

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Around the same time, when the Ukrainian Defence Ministry announced on Facebook that dozens of discharged military pilots were returning to the air force, it referred to the fascination with the anonymous pilot: “Who knows, maybe one of them is the air avenger on the MIG-29.”

The stories proliferated and overlapped. After reports in early March that the Ghost of Kyiv had been shot down, Ihor Mosiychuk, a former Ukrainian lawmaker, reported that the pilot survived, went back to his base, took off in another jet and downed another enemy plane.

“The ghost is alive!” he wrote on Facebook. The Kyiv Post reported that he had destroyed as many as 49 planes.

Scepticism spread in some quarters. But the legend only grew. Artists produced NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, with the pilot’s image. Blue and gold “Ghost of Kyiv” flyers and illustrations circulated online.

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On Friday, several publications identified the pilot as Tarabalka, an airman who died in battle March 13 and was posthumously awarded the military honour “Hero of Ukraine.”

The next day, the air force command of Ukraine’s armed forces debunked the claims. “Hero of Ukraine Stepan Tarabalka is NOT ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ and he did NOT shoot down 40 planes,” it wrote on Facebook. But it still worked to keep the myth going.

“The #GhostOfKyiv is alive,” the air force wrote on Twitter. “It embodies the collective spirit of the highly qualified pilots of the Tactical Aviation Brigade who are successfully defending #Kyiv and the region.”

For many Ukrainians, that was all that mattered.

“He IS a legend,” Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker, wrote on Twitter. “He can’t be killed – he is a ghost.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.