The authorities in the Sakha (Yakutia) region in Russia's Far East have declared an emergency in response to devastating wildfires burning across more than 331,000 hectares, the Civil Protection Ministry in Moscow reported on Monday.
Around 1,500 firefighters had been deployed to douse more than 100 fires, it said.
The ministry said that 353 fires were burning across an area of more than 600,000 hectares, with the Far East worst affected. Forests in the Amur region on the border with China and in the Baikal region in the centre of the country are also affected.
The fires in the Arctic region have led to enormous smoke plumes over recent weeks, with many cities under a cloud of smoke.
Most of the fires are in the north-east, where vast areas of forest and steppe were destroyed last year, as the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported on Thursday.
CAMS attributed the spread of the fires to higher temperatures and lower rainfall than usual in the region, part of Russia's Sakha Republic.
According to Copernicus figures, temperatures are currently seven Celsius degrees above the long-term average between the years 1991 to 2020 and along with unusually dry conditions.
Russia's Aerial Forest Protection Service (Avialesookhrana) predicted that fresh wildfires could erupt on account of dry weather fronts. Strong winds and dry conditions are causing the fires to spread.
The firefighting teams tend to leave the fires to burn in inaccessible regions for lack of personnel and resources.