Massive wildfires continue to ravage Siberia’s Zabaykalsky Krai region, with over 600,000 hectares of forestland having been burnt down, officials announced. A federal state of emergency has been ongoing since late April as firefighters struggle to put out 49 burning fires on this eastern Siberian region along the border with Mongolia.
As per the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, the overall fire-affected area due to such wildfires has crossed 629,000 hectares currently. Wildfires have destroyed over 1.4 million hectares of land throughout Russia since early 2025, almost double the area this year that is affected by fires in the US and Canada, as per data provided by Russia’s Federal Agency for Forestry.
The dense smoke from the blazes has spread hundreds of miles, with predictions by Europe’s Copernicus climate forecasting service that the haze will extend to Beijing and the Korean Peninsula over the weekend. Emergency measures have been introduced across several Siberian territories, including the Russian republic of Buryatia, where access to all forests has been restricted in an attempt to stem further destruction.
Buryatia alone has reported 174 forest fires since mid-March, with authorities blaming 90% of these on human carelessness. More than 530 firefighters are engaged in tackling the 22 active fires in the region.
The wildfire season this year began precariously early in mid-March, as opposed to May in past years, due to Russia’s increasing hotter and drier weather as a result of climate change. Such conditions have created an extremely flammable scenario, leading fires to move incredibly quickly. Throughout the nation, over 2,100 forest fires were reported in 2025, signalling an increasing environmental emergency in Russia’s sprawling wilderness.
