Four people have been injured including a fire chief who suffered a heart attack after a blaze broke out at a Moscow business centre today.
Flames and smoke engulfed the ten-storey Grand Setun Plaza building in Moscow's Kuntsevo district, prompting 1,000 people to evacuated.Sergei Zheltov, head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry's Moscow branch, had to be taken to hospital after suffering a heart attack while tackling the blaze as one other fireman and two civilians were also hurt.
Meanwhile, another blaze broke out at warehouses in Naberezhnye Chelny, near the central Russian city of Kazan, in the early hours of the morning as 90 firefighters were sent to tackle it.
Emergency crews did not give a cause for either fire, which come amid a series of mystery blazes across Russia - sparking suspicions of a sabotage campaign being directed out of Ukraine.
In a possible sign of nerves among Russia's elite about the fires, Major-General Alexander Kurenkov, Putin's former bodyguard turned emergencies minister, went to the scene of the Moscow fire to oversee the rescue operation.
As of Friday afternoon the fire had been extinguished and no deaths had been reported, the emergency ministry's Moscow deputy said.
Meanwhile flames were filmed raging through a 1,100sqft set of warehouses in central Russia.
The blaze had started shortly before 4am in an area of waste plastic and rubber products nearby before spreading to the warehouses, local media reported.
At least 90 crews and 30 vehicles were dispatched to tackle the fire, which was still burning three hours later. No cause was given.
Moscow has been at the epicentre of the mystery blazes, including one two weeks ago which consumed the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute in the outlying city of Zhukovsky.
The fire began at a power substation supplying the institute, 43 miles southeast of Moscow, which has been crucial to the development of aircraft such as the Su-27, MiG-29, and MiG-31 fighters which are in use in Ukraine.
Two chemical plants with links to the defence industry suffered fires, one at Kaprolaktam, in Dzerzhinsk, which once made chemical weapons, on 4 May, the other two weeks earlier at the Dmitrievsky plant in Kineshma.
Another fire raised questions of sabotage was at a Russian missile design institute in Tver in which 22 weapons officials and designers died.
The blazes may have been sabotage attacks by Ukraine aimed at 'dissuading [Putin's] weapons of mass destruction brinkmanship', says a US expert.
Professor Douglas London, of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and a retired 34-year CIA operations officer, told Foreign Policy that some recent incidents may have been sabotage linked to the war.
'US and allied enabling of a Ukrainian sabotage campaign inside Russia telegraphs a significant and escalating cost Putin can ill afford,' he said.
Russia’s leading independent gun-maker urged the Russian authorities to be more suspicious of sabotage over the wave of fires.
Vladislav Lobaev said: 'The Dmitrievsky chemical plant in the city of Kineshma burned down.
'It is the largest Russian manufacturer of chemical solvents used in a variety of industries….
'Separately, the building of the defence research Institute in Tver burned to the ground…
'It was at this institute that the Iskanders and the S-400 were developed.'
He warned: 'It is hard to believe in such coincidences, especially with large or such iconic enterprises.
'In wartime, it is necessary to work out the version of sabotage more actively.'
