KIEV, Aug. 8 – Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is sending extra troops to the Kharkiv region to reinforce firefighting effort at a military base that holds one of the largest stores of ammunition in the country.

The troops will surround the perimeter of the base, known as the arsenal No. 61, while two special helicopters capable of putting off massive fires will be deployed and patrol the area.

Also, a special fire fighting train, one of a kind in Ukraine, has been already positioned in the area and ready for the action.

“We will do everything possible to prevent fire at the arsenal No. 61,” Mykhaylo Yezhel, the defense minister, said while visiting the base, the ministry reported.

The effort comes after President Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday ordered troops deployed to fight the wildfires that have been spreading due to extremely hot temperatures persisting for two weeks.

Underscoring the difficulty of the situation, Yanukovych cut short his 46-day vacation in Crimea and on Friday had returned to Kiev to monitor the fire fighting.

At an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, the country’s top security body, Yanukovych specifically ordered to focus on preventing wildfires from reaching military bases that hold ammunition or fuel reserves.

The military base No. 61 in Lozova of the Kharkiv region stands out due to the massive amount of ammunition it is holding on its territory.

Although exact numbers of ammunition kept at the base is classified information, but Yezhel said at least 41,000 artillery shells are scattered across the base’s territory and may start exploding should wildfire reach the area.

Ukraine inherited massive amount of ammunition after the break up of the Soviet Union as Soviet military planners has thought to use the country’s strategic location in a hypothetical confrontation with the West.

One of such huge ammunition depots, in the town of Novobogdanivka in the Zaporizhia region, burnt to ashes six years ago wrecking havoc for weeks on the southern parts of Ukraine.

Yezhel said the troops will also build a water supply pipeline across the military base that will be used in case of emergency. The special fire train has been already sitting in the area.

“This is the only fire train in Ukraine that is used exceptionally in emergency situations,” Yezhel said.

The scattered arsenal on the bases represents not only direct danger, but also an environmental threat to the region, that’s why the government has allocated 22 million hryvnias to have the shells de-activated.

Yezhel said that the work on de-activation of the shells and other ammunition will begin after all anti-fire measures have put in place.

The Emergency Situations Ministry sent three fire helicopters MI-8 and one fire plane An-32P to the defense ministry, as the army has been deployed to help the fire fighting last week.

All of this equipment has been fighting fire in the southern regions, including Kherson and Crimea.

Russia and Ukraine are suffering through their worst heat waves on record, a condition that has sparked forest and peat fires across regions.

The wildfires destroyed a total of 1,240 hectares of forests in Ukraine as of August 5, according to the State Committee on Forestry.

In Russia, the wildfires killed 50 people and destroyed 196,000 hectares of forests as of August 5, according to Russia’s emergency situations ministry. (tl/ez)