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The Samara region alone accounts for a quarter of the crops destroyed by drought this year. More than 2.1 million hectares of grain have been destroyed by drought this year in Russia, Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said at a meeting on agricultural issues in the Krasnodar territory on Friday.

The Samara region alone accounts for a quarter of the crops destroyed by drought this year. A total of 616,000 hectares have been destroyed in the region, or 70% of the total amount planted. Farms in the Orenburg, Volgograd and Penza regions as well as the republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan have also suffered from the drought, she said.

"The Agriculture Ministry has come up with several measures to provide aid to the regions suffering from the drought," she said. Specifically, the Samara region is to receive some 600,000 tonnes of food and coarse grain from the intervention fund.

Addressing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who also attended the meeting, Skrynnik requested that "the Emergency Situations Ministry and the Finance Ministry be involved in the resolution of this issue." Putin proposed including this request in the minutes of the meeting. She also said that some 230 million rubles in damage was prevented in the Southern Federal District due to the work of weather services.