Russia 100811 Basic Political Developments

Smog leaves Moscow

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100811/160152304.html

06:55 11/08/2010

Air in Moscow on Wednesday morning is clean, there is no smog, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports.

Moscow was wrapped in a thick layer of smog from the worst wildfires in Russian history for over a week.

Health experts say pollution levels were so high that breathing was as dangerous as smoking several packs of cigarettes a day. Smog eased on Monday evening and continued to ease on Tuesday.

A scorching heat wave has gripped much of western Russia since mid-June, sparking wildfires and causing the worst drought in decades.

Weather experts: Smog expected to return to Moscow

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/77838/
Today at 09:05 | Interfax-Ukraine

A light wind has blown the smog away from Moscow, but smoke from forest fires is likely to return to the city soon, director of the HydroMetCenter weather monitoring agency Roman Vilfand told Interfax on Wednesday.

"A light wind is mixing air masses, pushing the smoke upwards and bringing relief to the city. But the situation has not become any better where fires are burning," Vilfand said.

"Forest fires have not disappeared and smoke will fill Moscow, which is in a high pressure zone now. Smoke is pressed down to the ground and stays there when an anticyclone arrives," the expert said.

"Rains, if they begin, will extinguish fires. The Emergency Situations Ministry is doing an enormous job to put fires out," Vilfand said.

Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/77838/#ixzz0wHBQs217

Muscovites Complain Businesses Raising Prices On Key Goods, Services

http://www.rferl.org/content/Moscow_Prices_Surge_Amid_Fires_And_Smog/2124479.html
August 11, 2010

MOSCOW -- Muscovites and Russian consumer advocates are complaining that stores have raised the prices on key products such as air conditioners, ventilators, and even cold drinks amid the intense heat and smog that is plaguing Moscow, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.

While people are upset at the inflated prices, Aleksei Koryagin, a representative of Russia's Consumers Association, told RFE/RL that there is little consumers can do legally.

"Consumers are basically defenseless," he said. "The local government has taken away all methods of regulation and [options for] consumers' defense."

For example, air conditioners that cost 15,000 rubles ($500) two weeks ago in Moscow are currently being sold for 60,000 rubles ($2,000).

Koryagin told RFE/RL that the rise in prices for items like air conditioners is "a tragedy."

"The markets are reflecting the full sickness of [Russian] society," he said. "Our businesses are not able to make money in a civilized way in this situation."

The price of coffins has also risen, as well as the cost of holding funerals, as the city's morgues are full.

Moscow's chief health official, Andrei Seltsovky, said on August 9 that the number of fatalities in the city each day has reached up to 700 people -- about twice the normal rate -- because of intense temperatures and smoke from rampant wildfires in the Moscow region.

Even people trying to escape Moscow have run up against financial obstacles. According to some reports, prices for package tours to resorts have also gone up.

But Irina Turina, a spokeswoman for the Union of Russian Tour Operators, said the prices are always high in August. She told RFE/RL that tour prices are not going up "six to seven times" like the price of air conditioners.

"I have heard that several tour companies have raised the price of plane tickets -- two days ago they cost 200 euros ($262) and now they are 450 euros ($590)," Turina said. "But the thing is, tourism is also a business, and when there is a rush on a product the price goes up."

Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky says that businesses are openly raising the prices because the business sector doesn't sympathize with society.

"Businesses don't consider themselves as part of 'society.' They don't believe in the prospects of this country, in this society, which until recently seemed healthy," he said.

Belkovsky says that while Russians have attacked the government for the way they have handled the fires, many are not acting responsibly themselves.

Fires Cause 'Brown Cloud' That May Hit Arctic

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/fires-cause-brown-cloud-that-may-hit-arctic/412111.html
11 August 2010

Reuters

OSLO — Smoke from forest fires smothering Moscow adds to health problems of "brown clouds" from Asia to the Amazon, and Russian soot may stoke global warming by hastening a thaw of Arctic ice, environmental experts said.

"Health effects of such clouds are huge," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a UN Environment Program study of "brown clouds" blamed for dimming sunlight in cities such as Beijing or New Delhi and hitting crop growth in Asia.

The clouds — a haze of pollution from cars or coal-fired power plants, forest fires and wood and other materials burned for cooking and heating — are near-permanent and blamed for causing chronic respiratory and heart diseases.

"In Asia, just the indoor smoke — because people cook with firewood — causes over a million deaths a year," said Ramanathan, of the University of California, San Diego.

Moscow city's top health official said Monday that about 700 people were dying every day, twice as many as in normal weather, as Russia grapples with its worst-ever heat wave.

"The Russian fires are in principle similar to what you see from other brown clouds," said Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, a vice chairman of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud study. "The difference is that this only lasts a few weeks."

Asian pollution has been blamed for dusting Himalayan glaciers with black soot that absorbs more heat than reflective snow and ice, and so speeds a thaw. Worldwide, however, the polluting haze blocks out sunlight and therefore slows climate change.

For the climate, "the main concern … is what impact the Russian smoke would have on the Arctic, in terms of black carbon and other [particles] in the smoke settling on the sea ice," Ramanathan said.

In past years, "we have had episodes of biomass burning that have brought clouds in over the Arctic," said Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Holmen, who runs a pollution monitoring station in Svalbard in the high Arctic, said the air over Russia was fairly stable in recent days, concentrating smoke over land. But a shift in winds, easing pollution in Moscow, could sweep smog northward.

Arctic sea ice, which shrinks in mid-September to an annual minimum before the winter freeze, now covers a slightly bigger area than in 2007 and 2008, the smallest extents since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.

The exposure of Arctic Ocean water to sunlight is a threat to the livelihoods of Arctic peoples and creatures such as polar bears. It also accelerates global warming, blamed by the UN panel of climate experts on mankind's use of fossil fuels.

"Such conditions are likely to become more common in the future," Rodhe said of the Russian heat wave and related fires.

Asia is most studied for brown clouds, but they also form over parts of North America, Europe, the Amazon basin and southern Africa. Burning of savannah in Sub-Saharan Africa, to clear land for crops, is a new source.

Forest and peat bog fires are burning over 1,740 square kilometers, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said. By contrast, official Brazilian data show that the Amazon rainforest lost 1,810 square kilometers in almost a year to June 2010.

Holmen also echoed Russian authorities' worries that the fires may also release radioactive elements locked in vegetation since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.

Radioactive isotopes include strontium-90 and caesium-137. Other industrial pollutants such as PCBs could also be freed.

MOSCOW, August 11 (RIA Novosti)