A page full of patchwork
The author of the text claims that the money allocated to Kyiv emptied the budgets of European countries, so they no longer have enough funds for firefighting equipment, fire prevention, evacuation of residents, and support for affected businesses.
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Using apocalyptic rhetoric, the consequences of the fires are listed: evacuated residents, burned houses, destroyed forests, damage to fishing and oyster farms.
However, the disaster is presented not as the result of many factors – extreme weather, climate change, drought, the condition of firefighting infrastructure, and the specific circumstances of the fires – but as an alleged direct consequence of support to Ukraine.
The text repeats the claim that the French treasury allegedly “has no money” because Ukraine supposedly “wasted absolutely all” the country’s financial resources. As alleged proof, the purchase of two firefighting amphibious aircraft is presented, which, according to the author, was removed from the budget due to a cost of about 200 million euros. This amount is contrasted with France’s support for Ukraine, thus creating a false dilemma: that the state can either help Ukraine or protect its own residents from fires.
A similar narrative is applied to the European Union. The author claims that Brussels allegedly did not invest in firefighting capacities for a long time because “cents were transferred to Kyiv.” This attempts to create the impression that European authorities deliberately abandoned their citizens and transferred all available funds to Kyiv.
The author also distorts the statements of the French president. E. Macron’s words about unprecedented fires and a difficult situation are presented as an alleged admission that the state has no money for either fire prevention or firefighting. From this, an unfounded conclusion is drawn that the lack of financial resources was caused precisely by support to Ukraine.
Finally, the publication compares France and Russia on a propagandistic basis. France is portrayed as an incompetent and weak state, unable to control even seasonal fires, yet preparing for confrontation with Russia.
Russia, on the contrary, is presented as a country that allegedly has enough equipment, responds quickly, and “always” extinguishes fires of any complexity.
Evacuated preventively
The claim circulated in a “Facebook” post that 300,000 people were forcibly evacuated due to fires is partially true.
About 220,000 people were evacuated in the Bordeaux region of France, and more than 63,000 in the Madrid, Toledo, and Avila regions of Spain.
However, the publication omits important context: a significant portion of those evacuated were tourists, and many evacuations were carried out preventively to protect people from possible spread of flames.
Therefore, the situation cannot be described solely as the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of permanent residents.
Money for Ukraine – a small part of the budget
The claim that the French treasury allegedly emptied due to support for Ukraine is false. The propaganda text relies on a real figure but gives it a misleading meaning. In the security agreement signed between France and Ukraine in February 2024, Paris committed to allocate up to 3 billion euros of additional military aid that year. This is not an amount automatically transferred to Ukraine every year, as might be understood from the publication.
Even if the entire planned 3 billion euros had been used, it would constitute about 0.18% of all public sector expenditures in France. According to the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, government sector expenditures in 2024 amounted to 1.67 trillion euros.
Thus, claims that Ukraine allegedly “wasted all” of France’s financial resources or that “billions are supposedly sent to Kyiv by the ton” do not correspond to the actual scale of expenditures.
There is also no data indicating that support for Ukraine emptied the French civil protection budget. The French Senate report for 2024-2025 states that national civil protection program expenditures in 2024 amounted to nearly 963 million euros – 75.7% more than in 2019.
Moreover, this amount does not cover all the country’s firefighting protection expenses, as a large part of the system is financed by local authorities.
The report specifically identifies the reasons for the increase in civil protection expenditures: growing risk of forest fires, intensifying floods, acquisition of new aircraft, increased fuel prices, higher employee salaries, and security for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Support for Ukraine is not mentioned among these factors.
Additionally, actual expenditures in 2024 exceeded the amount specified in the budget law by 9.3%. In other words, the government did not cut civil protection funding – on the contrary, additional funds were allocated during the year.
, already in 2021, total public expenditures in France for civil protection exceeded 6.5 billion euros, of which more than 5.3 billion euros went to departmental firefighters and rescue services.
Civil protection funding can increase or decrease in different years due to overall national fiscal policy, investment schedules, equipment purchases, and other budget decisions. However, these fluctuations alone do not prove any causal link with support for Ukraine.
Additionally bought aircraft
The claim that the purchase of two amphibious aircraft worth about 200 million euros was removed from the French budget has a factual basis but is presented misleadingly.
In 2024, the government of Gabriel Attal reduced civil protection funding by 50 million euros, and the order for two additional “Canadair” aircraft was canceled.
However, the publication omits the broader context. In August 2024, France still ordered two “Canadair” aircraft under the EU civil protection program “rescEU.” At the same time, France ordered two more modernized amphibious firefighting aircraft DHC-515, for which about 209 million euros are allocated in the 2026 budget.
The country is expecting a total of four new aircraft, but the first will be delivered only in 2028, and the newest not before 2032–2033.
After a large fire devastated the Odes department in 2025, the French authorities renewed plans to acquire additional aircraft. The 2026 budget includes an order for two more aircraft worth 209 million euros.
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Moreover, the 2024 funding cut was part of a broader state spending austerity plan. Official documents do not indicate that funds allocated for civil protection were transferred to Ukraine. Therefore, there is no basis to link the cancellation of the two aircraft orders with support for Kyiv.
Sent aid
The claim that European Union solidarity was limited to activating the civil protection procedure and that France did not receive real assistance is false.
As reported by the news agency “Reuters,” upon France’s request to activate the EU civil protection mechanism, aircraft from other countries were sent to the country: two Croatian amphibious firefighting aircraft, two Portuguese “Air Tractor” planes, and two heavy “Black Hawk” helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Later, the scale of assistance increased further. According to the European Commission, seven aircraft and four helicopters from the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, and Turkey were deployed in France.
The claim that the EU allegedly did not acquire or invest in firefighting capacities is also untrue. Under the “rescEU” program, a common European reserve of firefighting aircraft is being formed, which is used when national capacities are insufficient.
The reserve prepared for the 2026 fire season consisted of 14 medium-sized amphibious firefighting aircraft and eight light aircraft, deployed in various European countries.
Thus, the “Facebook” post omits not only the specific assistance provided to France but also the long-term EU investments in joint firefighting capacities.
Praised Russia unnecessarily
The claim that Russia has sufficient capacities and “always” quickly extinguishes forest fires does not correspond to reality. Russia is one of the countries most affected by them worldwide.
By July 17, 2024, the area affected by fires in the country reached about 8.8 million hectares.
At the same time, Russian officials also acknowledged that compared to previous years, the number of fires decreased, but the area affected increased by about one and a half times. This was reported by “Reuters” and the Russian news agency “Interfax”.
Moreover, Russia has so-called forest fire control zones. These are remote and hard-to-reach areas where regional authorities may decide not to extinguish a fire or to stop firefighting efforts if the expected costs exceed the possible damage and the fire does not pose a direct threat to settlements or infrastructure.
This possibility is enshrined in official regional legal acts, for example, in a 2024 document on control zones.
Therefore, the claim that every fire in Russia is extinguished “as quickly as possible” is misleading.
Some fires in remote areas are deliberately left to burn, and their very large scale shows that Russia itself constantly faces limited firefighting capacities, difficult accessibility, and extreme weather conditions.
An old tale
This “Facebook” post repeats a pro-Kremlin narrative that support for Ukraine is destroying Europe itself. As disinformation analysts from “EUvsDisinfo” have repeatedly recorded, texts of this nature link internal problems of Western countries – from fires and floods to inflation – to aid to Kyiv without evidence.
In this case, manipulation is created using real facts: actual evacuation numbers, an authentic quote from E. Macron, and a real 2024 budget cut episode. However, an unfounded conclusion is drawn that France ran out of money because of support for Ukraine.
The text also uses so-called mirror tactics: France is portrayed as incompetent and unable to control fires, while Russia is depicted as a state with all necessary resources that quickly extinguishes any fire.
Factual data about the huge areas burned in Russia and legally unextinguished fires in so-called control zones contradict this comparison.
The publication also provides almost no verifiable sources. Instead, emotional, factually unfounded images are used, such as farms “destroyed to ashes” or Kyiv “bathing” in billions. Such rhetoric is intended not to inform but to strengthen the reader’s indignation and direct it against support for Ukraine.
Even the “Canadair” aircraft story, which has a factual basis, is presented distortedly. In France, the decision to cancel two additional aircraft was a subject of domestic political debate, and the opposition criticized Gabriel Attal’s government’s overall austerity policy because of it.
In the propaganda text, this budget story is rewritten, omitting the broader context and claiming without evidence that funds were taken from civil protection and transferred to Kyiv.
15min verdict: partly false. The forest fires in France and Spain are unjustifiably linked to support for Ukraine. The post uses real facts – evacuation numbers, E. Macron’s quote, and the 2024 budget cut – misleadingly to conclude that aid to Kyiv emptied the French treasury and weakened firefighting protection.
However, civil protection funding increased, the country ordered new firefighting aircraft, and received assistance from other European countries during the disaster. At the same time, Russia is unjustifiably idealized, although millions of hectares burn there annually, and some fires in remote areas are not extinguished at all.
The publication was prepared by 15min in cooperation with Meta, aiming to stop the spread of misleading news on social media. More about the program and its rules – here
