Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday called for personal responsibility for forest fires across the country.
“Responsibility [for wildfires] should be personal,” Medvedev told a conference on the fight against forest fires in the West Siberian city of Tomsk.
The overall area embraced by wildfires in the Tomsk Region went down 16 percent over the past 24 hours to 4,900 hectares as of early Monday. Smog in the region complicated the operation of airports.
According to Forestry Agency chief Viktor Maslyakov, Russia has 149 forest fires at an area of 16,800 hectares now, 27 of them in the Tomsk Region.
