Russian military to fight Siberian fires

No injuries or evacuations have been reported so far from the fires, many of which appear to have been started by lightning strikes in "dry thunderstorms" in which precipitation disperses before reaching the ground.

Krasnoyarsk: Russia on Wednesday called the military to battle forest fires that have engulfed nearly 30,000 square kilometers of the territory in Siberia and the country's far east.

Authorities have declared a state of emergency in five areas, including all of the Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk regions, which lie north of Mongolia.

Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region, which stretches all the way to the Kara Sea and the Arctic Ocean, can be seen covered in smoke by satellite photos from NASA and Europe's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).

The deputy chief of the disaster management center, Sergey Abanin said, "We've been having for a long time and a failure to take active measures in extinguishing the majority of hotbeds of fires including those located in remote areas."

About 28,000 square kilometers of the fires are in difficult-to-reach areas and are not being fought because the cost and risk of doing so are higher than the potential damage that could be caused to the unpopulated areas.

No injuries or evacuations have been reported so far from the fires, many of which appear to have been started by lightning strikes in "dry thunderstorms" in which precipitation disperses before reaching the ground.

Meteorologists say that rain is expected in some of the burning areas, but not enough to put out the fires.