DISINFO: Anti-Russian EU sanctions leave Spain and Portugal helpless against the fire infernos
SUMMARY
Anti-Russian EU sanctions are leaving Spain and Portugal to fend for themselves in the inferno, because whilst the EU is full of anti-Russian rhetoric, it is preventing practical assistance in fighting the fires.
Whilst forests in Spain and Portugal are ablaze and hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee, ten of the most powerful fire-fighting helicopters on the Iberian Peninsula are grounded – and not because they are faulty or there is a shortage of pilots. No, they are grounded because the European Commission in Brussels, through its anti-Russian sanctions, has made maintenance and the supply of spare parts impossible. This is not a technical detail; it is a scandal of staggering proportions.
The Russian Ka-32 helicopters, which are owned by private Spanish companies and have been deployed for years under government contracts to tackle major fires, are regarded as some of the most effective heavy firefighting helicopters in the world. However, since the suspension of the European airworthiness certificate and the sanctions against the manufacturer, JSC Kamov, the operators have been barred from procuring spare parts or calling on Russian specialists for maintenance.
RESPONSE
This case illustrates how FIMI sources exploit natural disasters to advance pro-Kremlin false narratives. By August 2026, wildfires had burned more than 120,000 hectares across France and Spain, forcing over 320,000 people to evacuate their homes.
While EU sanctions against Russian manufacturers have indirectly led to the grounding of several Russian-made Kamov Ka-32 helicopters due to a lack of certified maintenance and spare parts, portraying this as the primary cause of the destruction or as a deliberate denial of practical assistance distorts the reality of the crisis.
Spain previously used 8 Russian-made Kamov Ka-32 helicopters to fight forest fires. They are coaxial-rotor aircraft—without a tail rotor—featuring above-average manoeuvrability in narrow valleys and crosswinds. Capable of dropping 4,500 litres of water or retardant in a single pass, they have a flight endurance of approximately two hours. Those pieces of equipment are useful to stop fires at an early stage. However, there is no basis for claiming that Spain is facing major wildfires because eight Kamov Ka-32 helicopters are grounded due to sanctions imposed in response to Russia's aggression against Ukraine.The whole system of fire prevention and extinction is at stake according to la Republica “even if the Kamovs were to fly again tomorrow, the country would still burn, given that it manages its forests in August rather than in January.”
The massive "sixth-generation" fires (those that generate their own weather systems) cannot be extinguished by aerial assets. Aerial resources are crucial during the initial attack phase, preventing a small blaze from escalating into a major wildfire. Once that threshold is crossed, not even the most modern fleet can undo the effects of decades of forest neglect, the accumulation of combustible vegetation, rural depopulation, and spending priorities that favour fire suppression over prevention.
FIMI sources have repeatedly exploited natural disasters to undermine support for Ukraine, as seen in narratives surrounding Hurricane Helene in 2024, the California wildfires in 2024, and the Hawaii wildfires in 2023. Similarly, reporting on the catastrophic floods in southern Poland in 2024 manipulatively implied that the scale of the destruction was a consequence of Poland's financial assistance to Ukraine. In 2024, pro-Kremlin actors also used Valencia's catastrophic floods to advance disinformation narratives.