More than a million hectares of forests are on fire in Russia, and larger areas than in previous years have already burned, authorities in the country, which is particularly exposed to the effects of climate change, announced on Wednesday.
Every summer, huge forest fires ravage vast swathes of forest in Russia, often in remote and sparsely populated regions, but sometimes threatening inhabited areas.
“There are now more than 500 forest fires in the country, covering an area of more than one million hectares,” Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov said during a televised meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
And since the beginning of the year, “we have recorded almost 6,000 outbreaks of natural fires over an area of more than 3.5 million hectares,” he continued.
Although the number of fires is down compared to last year, “the area of land burned has, on the contrary, increased by 1.5,” he added, specifying that more than 6,000 people have been mobilized to fight the fires.
Forest fires have been starting earlier and earlier in Russia in recent years, fueled by early heat. According to Environment Minister Alexander Kozlov, they started a month earlier this year “due to abnormal heatwaves and thunderstorms.”
The most affected areas are Eastern Siberia and the Far East, particularly Yakutia, a sparsely populated region that regularly suffers from climatic disasters.
While it is difficult to link any particular fire to climate change, climate change is making such disasters more likely and more severe, a phenomenon observed in many countries.
Environmentalists also criticize Russia’s wildfire-fighting policy, which ignores fires if the cost of putting them out exceeds the estimated damage.