Kremlin wants a clean-up. Outgoing President urges Siberian authorities to pay attention to ecology

Outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev has called for Russian regional officials to pay more attention to environmental groups.

'I would like to ask you to pay attention to necessary cooperation with non-governmental organisations involved in ecology problems,' he said in Samara on March 15.

He was in the Volga city to chair a meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights.

At an earlier session of the council, Medvedev highlighted problems in Siberia in warning that ecological problems go far beyond the widely-publicised Khimki Forest conflict close to Moscow.

'I have looked up several places,' he said. 'It's awful. For example, in a number of Siberian regions, there is no life there, there is an enormous pile of environmental problems, and silence. But we all talk about one extremely important issue for the whole country.'

Medvedev signed into law a new environmental monitoring system passed by the State Duma in November 2011.

This aims to unify the monitoring system throughout Russia.