Russia Putin: Last year’s forest fire disaster must not be repeated in Siberia – Ukraine’s war makes it difficult to get soldiers and equipment to work

Russian president Vladimir Putin has urged authorities to ensure that Siberia is not hit by a forest fire disaster similar to last year, Reuters reports.

“We cannot allow the situation last year to be repeated when the forest fires were the longest and most intense in years,” Putin said in a video meeting with regional leaders on Tuesday.

Minister of Emergency Situations Alexander Chuprian told Putin that since the beginning of this year, about 4,000 forest fires have been seen in an area of ​​270,000 hectares, which is slightly larger than in Luxembourg or about twelve times the land in Helsinki.

Last year, about 19 million hectares of forest were destroyed in Siberian forest fires, which corresponds to just over half of Finland’s land area. Smoke spread both to the big cities and even to the North Pole.

Canadian broadcaster CBC said last Fridaythat the war in Ukraine this year could hamper Russia’s ability to fight forest fires. Russian Air Force equipment and soldiers have generally been involved in putting out forest fires, but now there are both equipment and men in Ukraine.

According to the CBC, fires are now raging in places. As summer arrives and the weather warms, forest fires will move to more northerly areas with fewer people and fewer people involved in extinguishing.

“Often in the largest fires, military planes are needed to detect and validate satellite and local data and to participate in firefighting in Siberia. It is questionable whether this capacity will be available in the summer if the war continues, ”he said Axios news site interviewed by an American climate scientist Jessica McCarty From the University of Miami, Ohio.

Russia’s Greenpeace has estimated that a similar disaster may be facing Siberia last year.

“Nothing has changed since last year. Now it looks like we are likely to see another significant forest fire season, ”said Greenpeace, Director of Forest Programs Alexei Yaroshenko told Reuters.

Researchers according to global warming and forest fires are accelerating the melting of permafrost, which can have many unpredictable consequences. For example, in the summer of 2016, an anthrax epidemic suddenly broke out in the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia, the source of which was considered to be reindeer carcasses previously frozen in permafrost.

Huge amounts of methane and carbon dioxide are bound to permafrost. The melting of permafrost and the formation of new wetlands release these gases into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change.

An article published by Helsingin Sanomat in October last year on the melting of Siberian permafrost can read this link.