Officials found no burning landfills in Dagestan after complaints from residents.

Residents of Makhachkala and Kaspiysk are complaining of smoke and soot from burning landfills, but authorities have assured that none of the landfills in Dagestan are burning, and the air in Makhachkala is fine.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported, in August, a fire from a burning landfill spread to the Novaya substation in Makhachkala, leaving some residents without power. More than four thousand people complained about power outages to the Dagenergo Unified Contact Center.

Complaints from residents of Kaspiysk and Makhachkala about the burning smell from the landfill were published by Chernovik.

"I looked outside—the whole area was covered in white smoke, like a light fog, and there was a terrible stench," one reader was quoted as saying in the post.

"The burning smell was so bad it was impossible to breathe. This is the area around the Kaspiy store, Reduktorny settlement, Makhachkala, not far from the sea. Who is poisoning us and with what?" - another was indignant.

Kaspiysk is completely covered in smoke; it's impossible to be outside or open the windows because of the stench.

"In Kaspiysk, it's impossible to breathe because of the smoke from the burning landfill. Not only the Reduktorny settlement in Makhachkala is suffering from the smoke from the dump, but almost all of Kaspiysk!" another reader is quoted as saying.

"Kaspiysk is completely covered in smoke; it's impossible to be outside or open the windows because of the stench. They're poisoning us with this dump again. How long will this lawlessness continue?" another Dagestani resident was indignant, quoted in a publication dated November 25.

There are no reports of landfills and solid municipal waste landfills catching fire in cities and districts. No fires were detected in the republic.

The Dagestan Central Environmental Supervision Center and the Ministry of Natural Resources reported that they had conducted an investigation into complaints from residents about a persistent burning smell and smoke in the air of Makhachkala and Kaspiysk. "Information is circulating on social media that the smog is allegedly caused by burning landfills. To verify this theory, state environmental inspectors of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Republic of Dagestan immediately conducted on-site inspections of territories and waste disposal sites. Based on the results of the inspections, no fires were detected at landfills or municipal solid waste landfills in the territories of the republic's cities and districts," the Central Environmental Supervision Center said in a message on its Telegram channel on November 26.

The same day, the Dagestan Rospotrebnadzor reported that it had taken air samples in the area of Reduktorny settlement, the territory of 1st Makhachkala, and the village of Khushet. "Based on the results of laboratory monitoring, no instances of exceeding maximum permissible concentrations (MPC) of pollutants in the atmospheric air were detected," the agency said in a statement on its Telegram channel. A video of a mountainous region shrouded in dense smoke was published today by the Telegram channel "Novoye Delo." This video was taken today by our activists. But on the eve of the parliamentary session and Sergei Melikov's live broadcast, it will be difficult to remove the veil and rose-colored glasses. "Maybe they'll at least see it through the media," Novoye Delo writes.

It's worth noting that today, the head of the republic, Sergei Melikov, will hold a direct line, during which he will answer questions from residents of Dagestan, the Dagestan government announced on its Telegram channel on November 26.

Journalist Murad Magomedov noted in his Telegram channel that, according to people's stories, municipal employees are deliberately setting fire to illegal dumps, thus disposing of garbage. "Shamilsky District, Karabudakhkentsky District, Gumbetovsky District, Gunibsky District, Buinaksk, Babayurtovsky District… Local residents complain to us that sometimes it's hard to breathe. Popular Front activists constantly receive complaints from local residents. A security guard at one of the landfills told us outright that he sets fires deliberately, saying that otherwise the trash will accumulate. When I pointed out that he's poisoning the air and that local residents are getting sick, the man declared that if anyone dies first from poisoning, it'll be him, who's been sitting there for days," he said.