Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Mr Luzhkov, first, you were quite right to return from your vacation. Your timing is perfect. I expect the medical services are operating smoothly in Moscow despite all this smoke, providing prompt and effective assistance to those who need it. That is my first point.

Moving on, we have talked about this over the phone, I know that Moscow has the resources and is ready and willing to help... It would indeed be both the right thing to do, and helpful if you could assist in the construction of new housing for people who have lost their homes in the wildfires, in one of Russia's regions. For example, it could be Ryazan, which I am going to pay a working visit to. I could talk to the region's governor and see what they need, and then your professionals could determine the amount of aid needed, and offer direct help to those regions where your assistance is urgently needed.

Yury Luzhkov: Mr Putin, the situation in Moscow is complicated. To begin with, this kind of hot weather is totally abnormal. Thanks to the preventative measures we took we have fewer fires and fire hazards. The smog and heat have also required some emergency action on our part.

The first thing we did when the hot weather set in was to tighten control across the board, including public oversight, over the situation in children's summer camps. Here we have 193 of them, primarily the ones in the Moscow Region as well as in the Kaluga, Ivanovo and Tver Regions. Luckily, of those in the Moscow Region, very few are situated near Shatura and Yegoryevsk. The situation is under the tightest control there. The spread of wildfire is closely monitored, and we are constantly on the alert, so we can act quickly if the threat comes closer to the camps. The children's health is also being monitored strictly.

While we're on that topic, we are sending 10,000 children in need of medical care or treatment, primarily for lung problems, to one of Moscow's summer camps for children at the Bulgarian resort of Kamchia, where they will stay throughout summer, and even September and October. Others will be sent to Odessa, which has offered us its spa and resorts, as well as to the Crimea and Kuban.

Senior citizens are also having problems. When talking about these older generations, then of course, it primarily concerns the capacity of our medical services. We have 500 outpatient clinics, and 193 hospitals, which are all ready to operate to extra capacity. The ambulance service is fully mobilized, while clinics and hospitals are working weekends, treating people whenever they come in, because they are certainly seeing more patients than normal.

Vladimir Putin: Up 20%? 

Yury Luzhkov: Up 22%, but estimates vary. It depends on what period you use as a comparison. We also made the decision well in advance to send a large group of those elderly Muscovites who are in the "high risk" category in terms of their health, 1,600 people, to the south between August 12 and 14. They will be going to places in southern Russia and Ukraine with low pollution levels where they can breathe more easily and be given the medical attention they need. I think that all these measures require a great deal of effort, but they are yielding tangible results, especially how the ambulance service is working.

It has recently been inspected by several different bodies, which found it to be well organised. With the increased number of calls, ambulance crews are arriving within 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, not everyone in a dangerous condition calls an ambulance. I am going to make a special announcement about this at the next city hall meeting, and our meetings are always attended by the media, although the head of the city's health department makes these announcements daily: if you feel unwell, do not stay at home, we have enough hospital beds and sufficient outpatient capacity. This primarily concerns senior citizens because they are at greater risk. We have the capacity to deal with all this.

The situation in the city is still under control in terms of the utilities, such as heating and water supply. We are urging people in Moscow to use more water, even though water levels are decreasing by almost a centimetre a day due to evaporation brought about by these weather conditions in Moscow and the region. We are telling people to drink more water and use the shower, and we are spraying water outdoors in Moscow every two hours. We even modified the equipment we used to disperse the fog. Although these measures cannot cure the problem entirely, they still can help.

Now to the decision you have taken about providing assistance: the Moscow government will certainly back it with everything we've got and, Mr Putin, we will help the Ryazan Region. I know that you are heading to Ryazan soon. The region has problems with a shortage of social and engineering infrastructure facilities. If you indicate specific facilities that need to be built or repaired, we will provide assistance from our reserve fund - the fund that we keep for emergencies. It is not part of the city budget, so tapping it will not affect our usual spending or social and investment programmes. We are just very prudent so to speak, about how we use this emergency fund, so there is enough cash to spend on crucial facilities in the Ryazan Region, because we must help them, and on sites in the Voronezh Region, we have already been in touch with them. There they do not need our help with housing construction, because the federal government has taken care of that, in line with your decisions. We can offer them builders in support. These are large-scale projects. But we can send them builders. We are talking about social infrastructure facilities, such as water supply systems, sewage systems, technical infrastructure, outpatient clinics, kindergartens, schools, and clubs.

Well, the clubs could perhaps wait a little. But here, Mr Putin, I reported back to you that we can share up to 1-1.5 billion of our standard development projects - these are very well-developed plans that Moscow has, which can be built fast because all the designs are ready and the builders have experience with them. It is important that they are built promptly, because we are talking about people's lives. It is important that we here in the cities help people living in the rural areas. They also need their agricultural facilities repaired. Otherwise, Russia's economy will not be able to function properly.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much Mr Luzhkov. Your decisions are wise and timely. They are also valuable because people do need our support now. There are villages in the Ryazan and Voronezh Regions which are close to each other. They could benefit from having modern social infrastructure facilities of the kind Moscow construction workers can build so well. I mean they could be built to modern Moscow standards and shared by two or more villages.