Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2019 10:30:54 +0100 (MET)

Moscow, Dec 6, 2019 (AFP) - More than 50 polar bears have gathered on the edge of a village in Russia's far north, environmentalists and residents said, as weak Arctic ice leaves them unable to roam.   The Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund said climate change was to blame, as unusually warm temperatures prevented coastal ice from forming.   The WWF said 56 polar bears had gathered in a one-square-kilometre (0.4-square-mile) area near the village of Ryrkaipy in Chukotka on the north-eastern tip of Russia.

There were concerns they could enter the village, home to fewer than 1,000 people, and patrols had been set up to monitor their movements.   "The number of human and predator encounters in the Arctic is increasing," the WWF said in statement.    "The main reason is the decline of sea ice area due to the changing climate. In the absence of ice cover, animals are forced to go ashore in search of food."

Residents had gathered walrus carcasses in the area to try to keep the bears from wandering into the village.   "We have created a feeding point with walrus carcasses that we gathered along the coast," Tatyana Minenko of the local "Bear Patrol" told news agency RIA Novosti.   "As long as there is no big freeze, the sea ice will not form and the bears will stay on the coast," she said.

Russia's weather service said temperatures in the region should fall from Saturday and that coastal ice should freeze by December 11.    Polar bears regularly visit areas inhabited by humans in Arctic Russia to search for food, often in rubbish tips.   But the number of visits has been growing as the melting of Arctic ice from climate change forces the bears to spend more time on land where they compete for food.

Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 18:00:57 +0200 (METDST)

Moscow, July 31, 2019 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called in the army to fight forest fires that have been raging across vast expanses of Siberia for days, enveloping entire cities in black smoke.   Environmentalists have warned that the scale of the blazes could accelerate global warming, aside from any immediate effects on the health of inhabitants.   Around three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of land in the centre and east of the country were in the grip of fires on Wednesday, authorities said.

The acrid smoke has affected not only small settlements but also major cities in Western Siberia and the Altai region, as well as the Urals such as Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg, and disrupted air travel.   "After reviewing a report from the emergency situations minister, Putin instructed the ministry of defence to join the effort to extinguish the fires," the Kremlin's press service told Russian media.   Some 2,700 firefighters were already working to tackle the blazes, Interfax news agency reported.   The defence ministry told news agencies that 10 planes and 10 helicopters had been dispatched to the Krasnoyarsk region, one of the worst affected.

- Spread by strong winds -
The Kremlin press service said the armed forces in the Irkutsk region, also badly hit, had been put on high alert, without providing further details of military involvement.    The fires, triggered by dry thunderstorms in temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), were spread by strong winds, Russia's federal forestry agency said earlier.    States of emergency have been declared in five Russian regions.    People living in these regions have uploaded images to social media showing roads hazy with smoke and the sun barely visible in the sky.   The majority of the fires, however, are raging in remote or inaccessible areas. Authorities make the decision to extinguish them only if the estimated damage exceeds the cost of the operation.   A petition launched on change.org a week ago calling on authorities to do more to tackle the fires has gathered more than 800,000 signatures.

Summer fires are common in Russia but this year they have spread further than usual.   According to the Russian branch of Greenpeace, almost 12 million hectares of forest have been burnt this year -- causing significant CO2 emissions and reducing the future capacity of forest to absorb the carbon dioxide.   A spokesman for the environmental organisation told the Echo of Moscow radio station that the involvement of the military would not "drastically change" the situation with the forest fires.    Deploying army units to the forest could do more harm to the operation than good, Grigory Kuksin said.    The spokesman also criticised authorities for what he said was a delayed response to the crisis.

Date: Mon, 1 Jul 2019 18:20:04 +0200

Moscow, July 1, 2019 (AFP) - Twelve people have died and nine are missing after heavy rainfall flooded dozens of villages in Russia's south-eastern Siberia, the deputy prime minister said Monday.    A state of emergency has been declared in Siberia's Irkutsk region, where dozens of villages have been partially destroyed by floods after river levels began rising dramatically.   "Unfortunately, twelve people have died and nine are being searched for," Vitaly Mutko said during a government meeting in the Moscow region.

Mutko said some 32,700 people in 83 villages were affected by the floods.  "751 were injured, 153 have been hospitalised," he added.  Infrastructure has also been affected, he said, with around 13 roads and several bridges damaged.    Russia's defence ministry said it had sent more than 1,300 servicemen, vehicles, a plane and two helicopters to the affected areas.

Earlier on Monday, the country's emergency situations ministry said it had evacuated 2,273 people.    Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the region on Sunday, on his way back from the G20 summit in Japan.    He held a meeting with local authorities in Bratsk, a city 4,820 kilometres (3,000 miles) east of Moscow on the Angara River.    The Russian leader called on authorities to compensate those who suffered from the floods and to begin work repairing houses.          "Here the summer is short, winter comes quickly, there is very little time," Putin said in a video published by the Kremlin.

Date: Wed, 8 May 2019 11:35:32 +0200

Moscow, May 8, 2019 (AFP) - Seven hikers were missing and feared dead after an avalanche in Russia's Altai mountains, emergency officials said Wednesday, as search parties were dispatched to the area.   Nine people were caught in the avalanche Monday in the so-called Chuya Alps of Russia's Altai republic in southern Siberia, close to Kazakhstan and China.    "Two people managed to get out" and informed authorities on Wednesday, said the head of Altai's emergency services, Andrei Burlakov.   "Since the avalanche is rather large, the search and rescue operations can stretch out to an indefinite amount of time," he said.

The hikers were experienced adults following a complicated mountain route which was approved by the authorities, their instructor Vladimir Yudin told the BFM news website, adding that a comprehensive search would probably have to wait for the summer season.   He said the hikers were part of a group based in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

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