Officials said they closely monitored the contaminated areas, including the Bryansk region bordering Ukraine and Belarus whose soils were heavily contaminated by the 1986 disaster in then Soviet Ukraine.

Experts admitted the fires may reshuffle the location of the contaminated particles by moving them to other areas but added that much of them had already seeped into the lower layers of soil.

"There is no reason for panic," Alexei Bobrinsky, deputy director for the state-run Russian Centre for the Protection of Forests, also known as Roslesozashchita, told AFP.

"Part of the contaminating substances will be shifted with the smoke," he said. But "what's burning is on the surface, part of the contaminating substances has gone into bed deposits which are the last to burn."

Some 3,900 hectares (9,750 acres) of land in Russia deemed to be radioactive have been hit by the wildfires, according to the state forest watchdog Roslesozashchita.

Those included 28 fires covering an area of 269 hectares in the Bryansk region, 11 fires covering 173 hectares in the Kaluga region, 401 fires over 1,431 hectares in the Chelyabinsk region and 34 fires over 82 hectares in the Penza region.

The state-run Forestry Management Office for the Bryansk region said in a statement Wednesday that "the situation is complicated but stable and under control."

A spokeswoman told AFP separately that the contaminated areas in the Bryansk region were not currently on fire.

The deputy head of the state organisation's regional firefighting unit, Vyacheslav Yakushev, said his unit closely monitored the polluted areas but also said the threat of a spike in contamination was insignificant.

"Radionuclides (atoms with an unstable nucleus) have seeped into the lower layers of soil over the past 20 years," he told AFP.

Officials from the Russian emergencies ministry had earlier this week denied there had been fires in the Bryansk region, after concern was raised over nuclear particles being lifted out of the soil by the blazes.

On Wednesday, the ministry however put out a statement, saying experts had been monitoring irradiated forests for the past week and had not detected any radiation in the smoke in Bryansk and three other regions

Greenpeace in Russia also said the danger was insignificant.

"This is not a repeat of Chernobyl," Vladimir Chuprov, head of the energy programme at Greenpeace Russia, told AFP, adding the authorities in the Bryansk region had cordoned off the contaminated forests. "Thank God."

Chuprov however criticised the government's information policies, saying authorities should have done a better job of informing Russians of potential dangers near the radio-contaminated areas.

Russian official sources moved quickly to dismiss the threat from the fires. "I am asking not to sow panic," Gennady Onishchenko, head of Russia's health protection agency, said on the popular radio Echo of Moscow.

"There is pollution in the north-west of the Bryansk region but it's background contamination and there was a fire outbreak only in one area," he said.

Amid what is described as the worst heatwave in Russia's millenium-long history, hundreds of fires have raged, affecting nearly all areas of life and threatening to cost it 1.0 percent of gross domestic product, or 15 billion dollars, according to some estimates.

Russia's Nordic partners, which would be in the line of radioactive particles blown on by the wind, also played down the dangers posed by radiation.

Russia is known for whitewashing what it considers humiliating disasters ranging from the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000.

The federal government has yet to confirm that daily mortality rates in Moscow doubled as a result of the heatwave and smog after city authorities this week released death statistics.

earlier related report
Russia reduces wildfires but still on alert
Moscow (AFP) Aug 11, 2010 - Moscow enjoyed a respite on Wednesday from the smog from wildfires that sparked a health alarm, as authorities said area engulfed by flames had been reduced by half.

But the nation remained on high alert, with the state forest watchdog saying fires covering hundreds of hectares were recorded on August 6 in the Bryansk region -- an area hit by contamination from the Chernobyl disaster.

Anger mounted in the Russian press over the official response to the worst wildfires in the country's history, with questions asked even over the public relations tactics of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The total area of the wildfires in central Russia has halved in the last 24 hours but there were still hundreds of wildfires raging, the emergencies ministry said.

Fires covering an area of 92,700 hectares (more than 350 square miles) were blazing in Russia, almost half of Tuesday's figure of 174,000 hectares, it said in a statement.

But 612 fires were still ablaze, up from 557 reported on Tuesday. Authorities said they began flooding peat bogs outside Moscow. Left over from the Soviet era, peat bogs have over decades dried out and polluted the air.

Concerns remained over the situation in the western Bryansk region where the soil is still heavily contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.

"According to data from August 6, in the Bryansk region alone 28 fires covering an area of 269 hectares were recorded on these radioactive lands," on official from the Roslesozaschita forest watchdog said.

"There are maps of the (nuclear) contamination, there are maps of the fires. Anyone can put the two together. Why deny this information?" said the official, the Interfax news agency reported.

But the watchdog's deputy director Alexei Bobrinsky told AFP: "There is no reason for panic."

The national air pollution monitoring service Mosekomonitoring said carbon monoxide levels in Moscow did not exceed acceptable levels after smog over the weekend sparked a major health alert.

"Today and tomorrow we are expecting a stable situation," spokeswoman Elena Lezina told AFP.

"The concentration of hazardous substances has not exceeded the norm since yesterday. However, winds can shift later in the week and bring the smog back."

The smoke from wildfires and burning peat bogs in central Russia, amid the worst heatwave in decades, had for days seeped into apartments, offices, stores and even underground into the Moscow metro.

Muscovites fled the city in droves, while several leading industrial firms have shut down production to spare their workers the high temperatures, sending them on vacation.

Many Russians lay the blame for the disaster on the government but the authorities have rejected criticism that they were poorly prepared.

Moscow authorities acknowledged for the first time on Monday that due to the heatwave the city's daily mortality rate had doubled and morgues were overflowing with bodies.

In typical strongman style, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had the day earlier taken to the air in a water bombing jet to douse fires in one of the worst hit regions but his trip left some unimpressed.

"His PR engineers can think of nothing more other than to yet again sit him behind the controls of an aircraft," leading business daily Vedomosti commented bitterly.

The usually staunchly pro-Kremlin daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said sarcastically that the "Russian authorities are heroically (if you believe the television reports) fighting the forest fires."

"They are fighting the fires, having allowed these fires right from the start to reach a catastrophic magnitude," it said.

earlier related report
Russia in flames: a timeline
Moscow (AFP) Aug 11, 2010 - The forest fires which have been raging in Russia for the past two weeks have killed over 50 people, ravaged whole villages and burned hundreds of thousands of hectares of land.

--JULY 2010--

- Late July: Russia lives through an unprecedented heatwave. A smog cloud created by peat fires burning in the countryside blankets Moscow. Around 60 forest fires are registered.

--AUGUST--

- 1: Hundreds of thousands of firefighters, reinforced by army troops and planes, battle forest fires sweeping across hundreds of thousands of hectares in central Russia and spreading to the far east.

- 2: A state of emergency is declared in the seven regions which have been most affected. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin summons the governors of the concerned regions.

- 4: President Dmitry Medvedev sacks a string of military officers over failures to stop wildfires. He orders reinforced protection for strategic sites.

- The authorities announce they have removed all radioactive and explosive materials from the major nuclear centre at Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 500 kilometres (310 miles) to the east of Moscow. Radioactive materials are later returned.

- 5: The wildfires force the Russian defence ministry to order the evacuation of its munitions depots around the capital.

- Putin slaps an embargo on exports of wheat.

- 6: The authorities declare a state of emergency in Ozersk, home to major nuclear reprocessing plant Mayak.

- The authorities appeal for volunteers.

- 7: Moscow residents and tourists, many wearing masks, wheeze as they make their way round the city in the worst smog to hit the capital since the heatwave broke out.

- 8: Russia's emergency response minister orders firefighters to redouble their efforts to put out a wildfire threatening one of the country's nuclear research facilities at Snezhinsk in the Urals.

- 9: Moscow's top health official says the daily mortality rate in the capital has nearly doubled during the heatwave, with 1,300 places currently occupied out of 1,500 spaces in city morgues.

- 10: An expert says the fires can make several nuclear sites dangerous, especially if they block their electric supply.

- Putin is filmed visiting the Ryazan region south of Moscow, one of the worst hit, jumping into a Be-200 jet to scoop up water from local lakes and then dump it on the fires.

- Tests of Iskander missiles and other weapons made at Kolomna, 113 kilometres (70 miles) to the south west of Moscow, are suspended, according to the manufacturer.

- 11: Russia admits that wildfires hit hundreds of hectares of land contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

- The authorities say the area engulfed by flames has been reduced by half, but there were still hundreds of wildfires raging.

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