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Russia is using Soviet-era technology to make chemically induced rain clouds in desperate bid to stop raging wildfires.

Black smoke has already travelled 5,000 miles, hitting Canada and parts of the US, as the out-of-control fires spreading.

Originally invented to bring sunshine to the Red Square for communist military parades, the high-tech plan sess clouds spiked with a chemical cocktail causing precipitation to drench out-of-control flames affecting Yakutia - the world’s coldest region.

Brown bears are fleeing the burning Siberian taiga and venturing close to towns and villages where they are being shot as a danger to people.

(Image: Anton Kavashkin/The Siberian Tim) (Image: Kirill Skurikhin) (Image: Kirill Skurikhin)

Greenpeace say territories equal to the size of Scotland and Northern Ireland combined has been destroyed in Russian wildfires in recent weeks - including swathes of irreplaceable ancient boreal forest.

The Kremlin is also using its fleet of water-dumping Beriev Be-200 to attack the flames, amid claims the authorities are massively under-reporting the scale of destruction.

Each of the Be-200 monster planes can dump 12 tonnes of water on its target, then skim over a lake or river to reload in a matter of seconds and repeat the exercise.

(Image: The Siberian Times) (Image: Danil Barashkov/The Siberian Tim) (Image: Aerial Forest Protection Service / east2west news)

Smoke from eastern Russia has wafted over the Bering Sea in the northern Pacific and - caught by the jet stream - spread to Canada and as far as southern New England, say meteorologists.

Storm Center 7 Chief Meteorologist Eric Elwell was quoted saying: “Strong winds aloft in the polar jet stream carried some of the smoke from the fires across the Bering Strait and into northern Alaska, then southeastward into central Canada and eventually across the Great Lakes and eastward into southern New England.”