Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Tackling the wildfires in Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the army to help tackle massive wildfires raging in Siberia and other regions in the east.

The decision was taken after Mr Putin was briefed on the growing crisis by the head of the emergencies ministry.

About three million hectares (7.4 million acres) have been affected, in what Greenpeace is describing as an "ecological catastrophe".

Many local residents say not enough is being done to tackle the fires.

More than 700,000 people have signed a petition calling for tougher action and for an emergency to be declared across the vast Siberia region.

There has been widespread anger after comments by emergencies officials that they are not planning to tackle wildfires in remote uninhabited areas because there is no direct threat to people.

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On Wednesday, President Putin ordered service personnel of the defence ministry to join in the firefighting efforts in Siberia.

Ten planes and 10 helicopters with firefighting equipment are being deployed in the region.

A state of emergency was earlier declared in the Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk regions, two areas of the Republic of Buryatia and one area of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

On Wednesday Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev flew in to Krasnoyarsk city to chair a crisis meeting with local officials.

"The most important task is to prevent the fire from spreading to populated areas," he said.

He said everything had to be done to avoid a wildfire disaster like the one that hit Russia in 2010, when "practically the whole country was burning, and there were dozens of dead".

Last week, Greenpeace Russia tweeted that "big Siberian cities are covered with toxic haze that had already reached Urals".

The organisation estimated that 3.3 million hectares were burning across Russia, adding that this was bigger than territory of Belgium.

The acrid smoke has affected not only remote villages and small towns but major cities such as Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk.

Wildfires in Russia have been raging for weeks, caused by record high temperatures combined with lightning and strong winds. </s> MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered the army to help firefighters battle wildfires in Siberia but environmentalists said the move was unlikely to produce a quick breakthrough.

Wildfires have spread to around 3 million hectares of mostly remote forest, an area almost the size of Belgium, according to the Federal Forestry Agency, wafting smoke across Siberia and prompting several regions to declare states of emergency.

Environmentalists have dubbed the fires an ecological catastrophe and a petition circulated online by an ecologist from the Siberian city of Tomsk had garnered 824,000 signatures as of Wednesday demanding authorities take tougher action.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Putin had been briefed and had ordered the defense ministry to help put out the fires and also to permanently station a firefighting unit in Siberia’s Irkutsk region, one of the affected areas, until further notice.

The defense ministry was sending 10 Ilyushin-76 planes and 10 transport helicopters to the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk equipped with firefighting equipment following the order from the Kremlin, RIA news agency reported.

Firefighters were working to put out forest fires covering 107,000 hectares in Siberia’s Irkutsk and other regions, but other vast blazes raging on 2.9 million hectares are only being monitored, the Federal Forestry Agency said on Wednesday.

Regional authorities have said they do not plan to expend resources on fighting the latter as they are mainly in remote, uninhabited areas and therefore not a direct threat to people.

An activist at Greenpeace in Russia told Echo of Moscow radio station that involving the military in the firefighting effort was not likely to yield a breakthrough and that the move had also come “fairly late.”

“As a rule, bringing in the help of army units is ineffective because soldiers don’t know how to put out fires,” Grigory Kuksin, the Greenpeace activist, was quoted as saying.

“It would have been better to put out these fires in the early stages when it was still possible.” </s> Russian emergency services have finally moved to control a wave of wildfires rampaging across Siberia, but environmentalists said it was too late to prevent an environmental disaster.

Wildfires in the forests and taiga of eastern Russia already covered some 3 million hectares (an area as large as Portugal) and were spreading rapidly, the Russian emergencies ministry said on Wednesday. A thick smog hanging over much of the Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Buryatia and Yakutsia regions was disrupting air traffic and causing health problems.

Local people have been appealing for help since the wildfires broke out in June. But Moscow has shifted responsibility to regional governors. They have faced down calls for action saying it was pointless to waste scarce funds fighting remote fires that did not threaten inhabited regions.

Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, intervened this week, ordering governors in all stricken areas to take personal control of the crisis. “No general statements, no pointing fingers in the air [to the federal authorities],” he told a government meeting on Tuesday.

The Russian emergencies ministry began co-ordinating efforts to localise and extinguish the fires on Wednesday, saying it had deployed aircraft and personnel to join local firemen and rescuers on the ground. A state of emergency has been declared in four Siberian districts.

Alexander Chupriyan, the deputy Russian emergencies minister, said he agreed with local officials that the high cost of the fire-fighting campaign was not justifiable in economic terms, but officials could not ignore the plight of people living in the region. “What talk can there be of economics when hundreds of villages are engulfed in smoke and citizens are appealing for medical help,” he said.

Greenpeace warned that the wildfires had long ceased to be a local problem and become an “ecological catastrophe on the scale of the whole country”. A toxic smog that has already engulfed major Siberian cities was being carried west in the wind to the populous Urals region.

Russian social media users have been complaining for weeks about the government’s failure to address the escalating disaster as Siberia burns. Emotive photographs posted on the online “Save Siberia” campaign show black smoke bellowing out of forests and reindeer fleeing with their antlers in flames. More than 290,000 people signed a petition demanding action to protect citizens from fire and smog that was delivered by Greenpeace to the Russian government this week.

Wildfires frequently occur in Siberia in summer, but this year they have been exceptionally large. Like the devastating floods that hit Siberia’s Irkutsk region in recent weeks, the fires appear to have been caused by abnormal weather conditions.

“Changes in the climate lead to the most unexpected and unpleasant consequences when we drown and burn at the same time,” Vladimir Chuprov, the head of Greenpeace Russia, said on Wednesday. “To avoid a catastrophic scenario it’s necessary to reduce carbon gas emissions, restore forests and change peoples’ wasteful use of the planet’s resources.” </s> MOSCOW — U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call on Wednesday offered his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin assistance in putting out wildfires in Russia’s Siberia, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Putin has taken Trump’s offer as the key for a full-scale restoration of relations between Russia and the United States, the Kremlin’s press office said.

Wildfires in Russia have already spread to around 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of mostly remote forest, an area almost the size of Belgium, wafting smoke across Siberia and prompting several regions to declare states of emergency.

In the phone call initiated by Washington, Putin thanked Trump for his offer and told him that Russia has already mobilized air forces to fight Siberian wildfires. (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh Editing by Bill Berkrot) </s> MOSCOW: US President Donald Trump in a phone call on Wednesday (Jul 31) offered his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin assistance in putting out wildfires in Russia's Siberia, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Putin has taken Trump's offer as the key for a full-scale restoration of relations between Russia and the United States, the Kremlin's press office said.

Wildfires in Russia have already spread to around 3 million hectares of mostly remote forest, an area almost the size of Belgium, wafting smoke across Siberia and prompting several regions to declare states of emergency.

READ: Russia's Putin orders army to help battle wildfires in Siberia

In the phone call initiated by Washington, Putin thanked Trump for his offer and told him that Russia has already mobilised air forces to fight Siberian wildfires. </s> Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin and offered to help him extinguish wildfires raging through forests in Siberia, the Kremlin has said.

7.4 million acres of Siberian woodland — a patch of land equivalent to the size of Maryland — has so-far been lost, part of damage caused by the record-breaking heatwave which raged across Europe in July.

"The U.S. president offered Russia cooperation in fighting forest fires in Siberia," a statement from the Kremlin, quoted by Reuters, said.

Putin told Trump that Moscow would take him up on the offer if necessary, Reuters said.

Several wildfires between about 57°N and 70°N in Krasnoyarsk Krai and Sakha Republic, Russia, July 21, 2019. Flickr/Pierre Markuse

Putin also "expressed his sincere gratitude for such an attentive attitude and for the offer of help and support."

The Russian army was on Wednesday deployed to contain the blaze, launching 10 planes and 10 helicopters equipped with firefighting capabilities.

Russia declared a state of emergency over wildfires in the southern Siberian provinces Krasnoyarsk Krai and Irkutsk on July 30.

In November 2018, Trump claimed Russia's neighbor Finland never has any problems with wildfire because they "rake" the forest floor.

Read more: The UK confirmed its hottest temperature in history after a blistering heatwave scorched Europe

Trump made the comment while visiting Paradise, California, a town destroyed by the Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people.

Finland's president Sauli Niinisto later clarified raking was not a tactic they had ever used, and said he did not remember telling Trump it was.

This satellite image provided by Roscosmos Space Agency, taken on Sunday, July 21, 2019, shows forest fires in Krasnoyarsk region, Eastern Siberia. Roscosmos Space Agency via AP

Fires caused by the July heatwave have broken out in other parts of the Arctic region, like in Alaska and Greenland.

Since the beginning of June, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service observed more than 100 intense and long-lasting fires in the Arctic Circle, the World Meteorological Organization said on July 12. </s> Putin has taken Trump's offer as the key for a full-scale restoration of relations between Russia and the United States, the Kremlin's press office said.

U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call on Wednesday offered his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin assistance in putting out wildfires in Russia's Siberia, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Wildfires in Russia have already spread to around 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of mostly remote forest, an area almost the size of Belgium, wafting smoke across Siberia and prompting several regions to declare states of emergency.

In the phone call initiated by Washington, Putin thanked Trump for his offer and told him that Russia has already mobilized air forces to fight Siberian wildfires.

A White House spokesman confirmed the call took place, adding that "the leaders also discussed trade between the two countries." </s> • Donald Trump offered to help Vladimir Putin combat wildfires raging across Siberia, a result of July’s record-breaking European heatwave.
• The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Trump phoned Putin, who expressed his “sincere gratitude” and promised to take-up the offer if needed.
• 7.4 million acres of Siberian woodland – a patch of land equivalent to the size of Maryland – has so-far been burned, with Russian military deployed on Wednesday to contain the blaze.

Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin and offered to help him extinguish wildfires raging through forests in Siberia, the Kremlin has said.

7.4 million acres of Siberian woodland – a patch of land equivalent to the size of Maryland – has so-far been lost, part of damage caused by the record-breaking heatwave which raged across Europe in July.

“The U.S. president offered Russia cooperation in fighting forest fires in Siberia,” a statement from the Kremlin, quoted by Reuters, said.

Putin told Trump that Moscow would take him up on the offer if necessary, Reuters said.

Putin also “expressed his sincere gratitude for such an attentive attitude and for the offer of help and support.”

The Russian army was on Wednesday deployed to contain the blaze, launching 10 planes and 10 helicopters equipped with firefighting capabilities.

Russia declared a state of emergency over wildfires in the southern Siberian provinces Krasnoyarsk Krai and Irkutsk on July 30.

In November 2018, Trump claimed Russia’s neighbor Finland never has any problems with wildfire because they “rake” the forest floor.

Read more: The UK confirmed its hottest temperature in history after a blistering heatwave scorched Europe

Trump made the comment while visiting Paradise, California, a town destroyed by the Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people.

Finland’s president Sauli Niinisto later clarified raking was not a tactic they had ever used, and said he did not remember telling Trump it was.

Fires caused by the July heatwave have broken out in other parts of the Arctic region, like in Alaska and Greenland.

Since the beginning of June, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service observed more than 100 intense and long-lasting fires in the Arctic Circle, the World Meteorological Organization said on July 12. </s> Russia Says Trump Offered To Help Putin Fight Forest Fires In Siberia

President Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday and offered U.S. help in fighting widespread forest fires raging in parts of Siberia, according to a Kremlin account of the call.

Putin, in response, expressed his "sincere gratitude" to Trump and said that if necessary, he will accept the offer, the Kremlin said on its website.

"The President of Russia regards the US President's offer as a sign that it is possible that full-scale bilateral relations will be restored in the future," the statement from the Kremlin read.

"The presidents of Russia and the United States agreed to continue contacts both in a telephone format and in person," it added.

However, the two countries differed somewhat in their interpretations of the call.

As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, "Russia announced the call first, saying President Trump offered Putin assistance fighting wildfires in Siberia. ... Putin assessed the offer as a sign that relations between the two countries would be fully restored. Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and is still under U.S. sanctions."

A few hours later, the White House said Trump "expressed concern over the vast wildfires afflicting Siberia" and that the two leaders "also discussed trade between the two countries."

In recent days, wildfires have scorched parts of Siberia, creating an "ecological catastrophe," according to Greenpeace Russia. The fires have produced 4 million square kilometers of smoke, covering large Siberian cities with a "toxic haze," Greenpeace tweeted.

Relations between the two countries have deteriorated over the years, particularly after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and amid Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The call between Trump and Putin comes just days before Friday's expected U.S. withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin orders the Russian Ground Forces to join firefighting efforts to help tackle raging wildfires in Siberia. A state of emergency has been declared in Irkutsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Buryatia and Sakha Republic, where millions of hectares are currently burning out of control.