Ever more wildfires are burning a swath through European Russia, bringing ever more death and destruction to the world's largest country. Pictures from many regions are reminiscent of war: smouldering ruins, people distraught after losing their homes, corpses of animals, scorched earth and, everywhere, fire.
Russia's worst woodland and peat bog fires in decades have raged for days now. Thousands of soldiers are assisting efforts to put out the blazes - so far to little avail.
Fire-fighters were able to prevent flames from spreading to a nuclear research centre in Sarov, in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow. More than 100,000 Russians are battling the blazes. Dripping sweat, blackened by soot and choking to breathe, they are at the point of exhaustion.
Their country, meanwhile, is facing a national - if not fully natural - disaster. A state of emergency has been declared in many regions. Now help is on the way from abroad.
Several days ago, Germany, Ukraine and other countries offered Russia technical and humanitarian assistance. On Tuesday, finally, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree accepting help from Ukraine and Azerbaijan: two military airplanes and two helicopters, respectively. For Russia, a raw-materials powerhouse that likes to strut on the world stage, it is not easy to admit need. Medvedev called the fires a "tragedy."
Political observers suspect the situation is worse than authorities say. The German-based relief organisation Caritas International, which has begun to distribute clothing, food and toiletries to fire victims in Voronezh, Saratov and elsewhere, says more people have likely died than is known.
Authorities put the number of dead at more than 40. But new reports of fatalities keep coming from the many regions that are burning. Fires have broken out in the taiga and in other areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East. There are reportedly hundreds, even thousands, of fires across the country. But figures offered by civil defence officials change almost hourly, and the overview is blurred.
An area twice the size of Majorca, Spain's largest island, has gone up in smoke. Huge amounts of grain have been incinerated - more then 20 million tons, equal to about a quarter of last year's harvest, according to the Agriculture Ministry. There has been panic-buying of flour and Russians' beloved buckwheat in the western Siberian region of Omsk. Prices of many foodstuffs have risen by 15 per cent in a week, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper reported.
Russia will long feel the effects of the drought and hottest weather in well over a century, with temperatures hovering around 35 degrees centigrade for weeks.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made a show of visiting disaster areas, promising reconstruction of the hundreds of destroyed homes by November at the latest, but criticism of Russian leaders is growing louder.
"The state is to blame!" many desperate people shouted at Putin.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) accused the Russian government of having helped set the stage for the blazes with its 2007 forest code, which turned responsibility for fire prevention over to tenants and local authorities.
Forests need at least a decade to regenerate, and feeding grounds for wildlife has been destroyed in many places, said Nikolai Shmatkov, WWF-Russia forest policy co-ordinator. He added that Russia was doing too little to combat global warming.
Smokey peat bog fires, which have fouled air for days in the capital Moscow - home to some 10 million people - are also largely man-made, Shmatkov said. He pointed to Soviet times, when peat bogs were massively drained to allow construction of country houses.
Peat is very flammable and contains enough air to be able to smoulder for a long time, even in deep layers. Now, for the first time, Putin has showed himself amenable to wetland restoration.
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