Moscow, 20 July 2021 (dpa/MIA) – It will not be possible to extinguish the severe forest fires in eastern Russia any time soon, according to Russian environmentalists. “Large swathes of Yakutia are now on fire. Only rain can help here,” said Grigory Kuksin, the head of Greenpeace Russia‘s Wildfire Unit, to the Interfax agency on Tuesday. Kuksin said it was unlikely that the situation in the particularly hard-hit region of Yakutia (officially the Sakha Republic), where most of the forest fires in the world’s largest country are currently raging, would improve before mid-August. Firefighters in Yakutia currently number the wildfires in the region at 205. According to figures released by the Aerial Forest Protection Service on Tuesday, the area covered by wildfires was slightly less than that the previous day, and currently stands at around 680,000 hectares. There are currently 2,100 firefighters whose main focus was to stop the fires engulfing local settlements, he said. Greenpeace believes that the situation in Russia is actually far worse than indicated by the authorities. Satellite images show that some three million hectares is currently on fire in Russia. The Aerial Forest Protection Service, on the other hand, put the number at around two million. According to Greenpeace, many settlements and towns in Russia are struggling with the thick smoke that has engulfed them. In Yakutia, the concentration of hazardous substances in the air is far above legal limits, Kuksin said. Many forest fires are caused by negligence, he said, often when campfires got out of control or from people dropping cigarette butts.