A total of 165 fires are raging over 4,300 hectares in Russian forests and peat bogs, 18 of them in the Moscow region, the Emergencies Situations Ministry said Monday, evoking memories of the fires in 2002 that engulfed areas of Moscow in clouds of acrid smoke.

Smoke from burning peat bogs outside Moscow produced levels of carbon dioxide twice the legal maximum in southern and southeastern Moscow on Monday, the city weather bureau said.

The Emergencies Situations Ministry promised last week to put out the fires around Moscow within a few days, and it dispatched 1,700 firefighters, 455 fire engines and four helicopters.

The wind was expected to change direction and bring more smoke toward Moscow late Monday, and meteorologists predicted that clouds of smoke were likely in the city until the end of the week.

Over the weekend, hundreds of police officers and Interior Ministry troops guarded the forests around Moscow, warding off tourists and hikers, Gazeta.ru reported. Campfires left by them were said to be the major reason for the forest fires. Unusually clear and dry weather in Moscow over the last week had contributed to the spread of the fires, the Moscow branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

The country's two biggest forest fires, accounting for more than half of the total area burning, were in the Far East Khabarovsk and Chita regions on Monday, the ministry said.

On Sunday alone, the fires laid waste to almost 1,300 hectares of forests and other land, the ministry said.

In Nizhny Novgorod on Monday, police had to block traffic on the main highway to Moscow due to low visibility caused by smoke from forest fires.