by Agence France-Presse. MOSCOW — Russia struggled Thursday to contain the worst wildfires in its modern history. The blazes, which are spreading to the south, have killed 50 people and are raising concerns about radiation levels. With the most severe heat wave in Russia in decades affecting economic areas as diverse as sales of anti-pollution masks and agricultural yields, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took the dramatic step of banning grain exports until Dec. 31. “We have seen over the last 24 hours a decrease in the number of fires but not so much that we can rejoice,” Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a news conference. Shoigu expressed alarm that the situation was worsening in the south — so far spared the worst of the fires — including in Rostov, which is not one of the seven Russian regions where a state of emergency has been declared. “Today, the situation has been getting worse in the Rostov region and we can note a movement of the fires towards the south,” he said. Shoigu said the emergency services were working hard to prevent the fires spreading to a region in western Russia where the soils are still contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of 1986 in neighboring Ukraine. “We are painstakingly controlling the situation in the Bryansk region,” he said. “If a fire appears there, the radioactive particles could fly away with the smoke and a new polluted area could appear.” The death toll rose to 50 after a corpse was found in a burned-down house in the Nizhny Novgorod region and another victim died in hospital in the Voronezh region, the ministry said. According to the ministry, 162,000 emergency workers have been deployed to douse the flames, which have been raging in the affected area in central Russia for a week. Officials have lashed out at weekend picnickers who exacerbated the situation by leaving burning campfires that turned into major blazes. But there has been no suggestion of deliberate arson. With the situation escalating, Medvedev warned Russia’s top two naval commanders and sacked a number of high-ranking officers for failing to prevent a wildfire spreading to a military base last week. Fires had ripped through a naval logistics base southeast of Moscow, destroying the staff headquarters, financial department, 13 warehouses containing aeronautical equipment, and 17 storage areas containing vehicles. The investigative committee of prosecutors said Thursday that it had opened a criminal inquiry into “major damage through negligence” over the military base fire. The authorities have deployed thousands of workers to prevent an even greater calamity as wildfires raged within a few miles of the country’s top-secret nuclear research facility in Sarov, a city closed to foreigners. Officials said all dangerous nuclear materials had been moved away. “The situation is under control,” the Interfax news agency quoted an official as saying. The wildfires have also forced the Russian defense ministry to order the evacuation of munitions from military depots around the capital, the Ria Novosti news agency reported on Thursday.

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