MOSCOW A total of 165 fires over 4,300 hectares were raging 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 summer 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 Moscow Weather Forecasting Bureau said.

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

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