MOSCOW — For over a month, Moscow has been boiling in 40-degree-Celsius heat and heavy, sticky, eye-burning smog. Carbon monoxide levels have reached crisis levels, at six times the maximum allowable concentration. Other toxic substances in Moscow's air are at nine times the normal level.
Early this month, a journalist called the office of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, seeking comments on the situation.
"The office is closed," a woman at the press office answered, adding that smog had gotten inside the mayoral building, which is less than three kilometers from the Kremlin, so everyone was ordered to go home. This was a weekday, shortly after lunch. "(The mayor) is not in Moscow," the woman said.