On November 23, a day of memory was held in Moscow for the legendary Russian ethnographer, archeologist, orientalist-turkologist, Professor Sevyan Vainshtein (1926-2008). His friends, colleagues and students, including those from Buryatia and Japan, gathered in his apartment. Among them was Dr. Elena Petrovna Batyanova, who remembered Sevyan Izrailevich with deep gratitude – as a great researcher of history, ethnography and archeology of Tuva, as a specialist in the area of history and culture of the nomads of Eurasia.

He walked for three days to fulfill a promise he gave a year ago. From over there beyond the mountain, from the summer pasture. By way of an old footpath, which nobody except him remembers anymore.

Whitefoot came with him – Ak-Khol, his dog with white front legs. And two riding reindeer, Blackie and Zorka.

The ongoing rains helped putting down a greater part of 11 forest fires that have raged in Russia’s Republic of Tuva from the beginning of the Russian holidays. Three fires are still burning in the republic, one of them has already been localized. If the fire area totalled more than 5,000 hectares two days ago, it has shrunk to 2.6 thousand hectares by Friday morning.

St. Petersburg placed 85th out of the country’s 89 regions in a newly released rating by the Russian Independent Environmental Monitoring Agency. To award a position in the rating, the experts assessed a range of factors affecting the state of the environment, including air and water pollution, changing ecosystems, the production and treatment of industrial waste, environmental protection efforts, accountability by local business communities and the endangered status and extinction of animal species.

Heavy rains helped to put out forest fires in the Irkutsk Region over the past 24 hour. The number of fires decreased from 82 to 23, but 710 hectares are still burning, the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s regional department told Itar-Tass on Friday.

Wildfires have destroyed nearly 42 square miles of woodlands in the Russian republic of Tuva, officials say.

A duty officer at the regional Ministry of Natural Resources said while firefighters had been able to contain 10 large fires in the southern Siberian region, other blazes were still spreading, ITAR-TASS reported Saturday.

Six people, including a nine-year-old girl, died when two cars collided head on in Tuva, 19 km to the west of Kyzyl. Four died on spot, seven others were taken to hospital in Kyzyl, where two more died, including a 4-year-old child. Head of Tuva Sholban Kara-ool expressed his deep condolescense to the relatives of the car-accident victims.