Russia battles forest fires amid another hot summer

Russia's state forest agency said on Thursday it was fighting 222 separate blazes across 20 regions, as an unusually hot summer fuelled forest fires that have destroyed millions of hectares of woodland in recent years.

In a statement published on the messaging app Telegram, Russia's Federal Forest Management Agency said states of emergency were in force in the far eastern Yakutia and Zabaikalsky regions because of forest fires.

It said more than 5,000 people were working to suppress fires across Russia.

Russia has in recent years been hit by increasingly damaging forest fire seasons that experts say are driven by rising temperatures driven by climate change.

Earlier this month, authorities declared states of emergency in both Yakutia and Siberia's Tuva region, amid escalating fires.

In Yakutia, a remote and heavily-forested region around the size of Texas, local media reported that blazes had engulfed more than 930 hectares of land to come within 10 km (6.2 miles) of Belaya Gora, a village of 2,000 people in the region's northeast.

Authorities in Yakutia, which has been repeatedly ravaged by fires in recent years, said fires in three of the region's districts were under control of emergency services.