Russia steps up fire battle

Russia on Thursday stepped up efforts to halt wildfires near its main nuclear research site, as President Dmitry Medvedev said a quarter of crops had been lost in a record heatwave. Fears were also raised that that fires could stir up radioactive particles on land still contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster but the authorities warned against any panic.
Medvedev reported success in containing the fires that have killed over 50 people and destroyed entire villages, saying he has given orders to lift the state of emergency in three of seven regions. But he warned that many farms were on the verge of bankruptcy after one quarter of the country's crops have been lost due to the heat. "We have a very complicated situation because as a whole in the country around a quarter of the grain crops have been burned," Russian news agencies quoted the Kremlin chief as saying in the southern town of Taganrog.
"Unfortunately many farms are on the verge of bankruptcy on account of the death of the harvest." Medvedev also said he had lifted the state of emergency in Vladimir, Voronezh and Marii El regions, while the situation remained complicated in another four - Mordovia, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan regions.
Russia is battling what experts say is the worst heatwave in its millennium-long history which has affected nearly all areas of life and may cost it one percent of gross domestic product, or 15 billion dollars. Fires also blazed in neighbouring Ukraine, with the emergency services working to put out a two-hectare (five-acre) peat bog fire 60 kilometres (35 miles) from Chernobyl. Russia sent a special firefighting train and 70 more people to join over 3,400 fire-fighters battling to douse wildfires close to its top nuclear research centre in Sarov, a town in the Nizhny Novgorod region still closed to foreigners as in Soviet times.
While no blazes had been registered on the territory of the nuclear research centre itself, a nearby nature reserve has been on fire for around a week. A firefighting train has been involved in putting out the fires, while a second train was on its way to the scene. Two soldiers were killed by blazing trees as they strove to put out a fire close to the centre on Monday.
"We have no control (over the fires), now all we can do is get ourselves killed," fire-fighter Vasily Fill-in told an AFP correspondent in the forest of Tokushevo, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the centre. Concern remained over the radiation risk from burning forests still contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster after officials admitted on Wednesday forest fires hit hundreds of hectares of contaminated land.