2010 summer’s wildfires demonstrated inefficiency of Russia’s forestry sector legislation and management, Dmitry Medvedev pointed out at a meeting on forestry development in the Kremlin today.The President called for a thorough analysis of forestry legislation (the Government received this instruction in August) and performance of the agencies responsible for this sector.

The number and extent of forest fires in Russia's central European provinces appeared to be abating for the first time in days, a senior government official said Thursday. Vladimir Stepanov, head of the national crisis centre, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that the number of fires and the area of land burning had fallen in the past 24 hours.

Just as Russian emergency officials were reporting some success in taming the fires ravaging the countryside, heavy smoke has finally hit Moscow, bringing the city to a near standstill.  But that's not as scary as the more important possible effect on the global wheat sector.  The wildfires and a severe drought have devastated more than a third of cultivable land in Russia, leading Putin to impose a temporary ban on grain exports last week.

Rescuers pulled a body out from a Russian village near Russia's fifth-largest city, Nizhny Novgorod, gutted by wildfires and another person died in a Voronezh hospital of their injuries as the death toll from the Wildfires sweeping Russia rose to at least 50.

President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed from military service, a number of officers including Colonel V. Bironta - Head of the central air-technical base of the marine naval aviation of Russia, whuch was extensively damaged by fire.

The Los Angeles Times has been speculating that the highly visible actions of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in dealing with the wildfire fires that are engulfing European and Central Russia as a sign that he is preparing to stand for re-election to the Presidency.

“Industrial production might suffer in July-August from the recent abnormal heat in Russia,” VTB Capital’s analysts including Dmitry Fedotkin, the bank’s economist in Moscow said in an e-mailed note today. “In particular, major automakers have announced summer breaks due to the extreme weather conditions.”