The heads of 80 regions of Russia took part in the conference via a direct link with the Russian government's Situation Centre.

In his opening remarks, Viktor Zubkov said, in part:

"Today, we take stock of the work of the government, the Federal Agency for Forestry and the regions to prepare for the upcoming fire season. It is coming up soon, especially for regions in Southern Russia. Therefore, the regions now have to be ready to make use of the best practices and the resources that were prepared last autumn.

Let me remind you that last year we had an unprecedented number of forest fires. They were more than 32,000 in an area of 2.3 million hectares. The fires caused deaths and enormous economic damage. Damages for the timber industry alone were over 85 billion roubles. Therefore, this issue – as you all know well – is of the utmost importance.

We now need to focus on practical fire prevention measures.

We particularly need to focus on protecting towns, villages, farmland and infrastructure.

Forestry services will conduct preparations for the upcoming fire season under new organisational and financial conditions.

The president has decided to re-organise forestry management – the Federal Agency for Forestry (Rosleskhoz) is now directly subordinate to the government and has been endowed with new powers.

The government has approved changes to the Russian Forest Code and other legislation relating to fire safety.

There has been an increase in administrative and criminal liability for the violation of fire safety regulations in forests both in terms of legal entities and individuals.

The legislation has increased the criminal liability for forest arson and associated damage from two to four years. In this case, forestry officials and workers exercising state supervision in forests have the right to formally document these offences.

The protocol for executive bodies for the prevention and control of forest fires has been established.

The Federal Agency for Forestry has developed a draft structure for the unified management of forests in the regions according to their features – forestation, volume of wood processing, and infrastructure.

The agency has also established a 24-hour central dispatching point.

The federal funding of operations related to fire safety is more than four times higher – from 2.2 billion roubles in 2010 to 9.5 billion roubles this year. All this money is already in the regions.

Out of the 9.5 billion, 4.5 billion is subventions for fire prevention, and 5 billion is subsidies to regional budgets to purchase specialised forest fire equipment and equipment for forest fire stations. A similar amount is budgeted for 2012 and 2013.

An inter-departmental working group has been formed to enhance coordination between federal and regional authorities in order to ensure fire safety in the forests.

It includes representatives of the Federal Agency for Forestry and the Ministries of Emergencies, Industry and Trade, Natural Resources, Finance, Interior, Defence, Regional Development and Economic Development, as well as the Moscow Region.

Consequently, the government has adopted a set of measures to prepare for the 2011 fire season.

Today, let's take a look at how they operate in the regions.

I would like to note the positive experiences in a number of regions in preparing for the fire season. The maintenance of roads used for fire prevention has been stepped up in the Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga and Yaroslavl Regions. Work on fire lanes and barriers has increased in the Belgorod, Kostroma and Vladimir Regions.

There are regional fire dispatch centres in 37 regions. The rest of the regions will have such centres soon. Accordingly, please focus on the work of the heads of the Komi Republic, and the Novgorod, Ryazan, Ivanovo, Voronezh and Lipetsk Regions.

I'm asking regional leaders to focus on establishing specialised institutions to protect forests from fires and the approval of a plan for extinguishing fires, in order to be fully prepared for the fire season.

I want to stress that officials will be held personally responsible for failure to exercise delegated powers in the realm of forestry.

A separate task is addressing issues related to the irrigation of peat bogs in the Moscow Region. This issue is under special scrutiny. Isolated peat fires are still burning in the region. The leadership of the Moscow Region recommends stepping up the pace of peat bog irrigation."