Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his condolences for the victims of fires to Russian Premier Vladimir Putin in a telephone conversation, RBC reports.
The Russian Cabinet said that the conversation was initiated by the Turkish side. Erdogan spoke words of support and solidarity with Russians, noting that Turkey has the same problems almost every summer.
He said that Turkey is ready to support the Russian side.
According to the Russian Emergencies Ministry, the area covered by fires on August 6th 2010 is 595.5 hectares. There are 831 fires, including 42 peat fires. There have been 50 victims of fires.
Russia is forming international land and air firefighting brigades, the director of international activities of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, Yuri Brazhnikov told journalists, ITAR-TASS reports.
The countries helping Russia extinguish fires are Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Italy, Poland and Bulgaria. A spokesman for the ministry said that by July 31st they had already received the first offer of help from Germany. Then offers started coming in from CIS countries.
