LONDON (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin told regional officials on Tuesday to deal with forest fires in Siberia and said there could be no repeat of last year’s fire season – the biggest on record.
In an online meeting shown on state TV, Putin said fires were causing significant material damage and posing a threat to life, the environment and the economy.
Putin said: “We cannot allow a repeat of last year’s situation, when forest fires were the most long-lasting and intensive of recent years.”
Acting Emergencies Minister Alexander Chupryan told Putin: “Altogether since the start of the year on Russian territory there have been 4,000 forest fires on an area of 270,000 hectares” – an area larger than Luxembourg.
The 2021 fire season was Russia’s largest ever, with 18.8 million hectares of forest destroyed by blazes, according to Greenpeace Russia.
At least eight people died in Siberia on Saturday as fires ripped through hundreds of buildings in several villages, with high winds hampering efforts to extinguish the blazes.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
