The Akim of Kostanay Region Kumar Aksakalov, during a briefing at the Central Communications Service (CCS), rejected data on steppe fires covering an area of 2.3 billion m², stating that then an entire region would have to be burning. It turned out that he clearly does not know the area of the region.
During the press conference "On the socio-economic development of the Kostanay Region," a journalist from FBRK asked a question about the steppe fires covering 2.3 billion m², recorded by satellite monitoring: what measures were taken to extinguish them and why the scale of the fires was hushed up in the media.
The reaction was quite unexpected. Both the briefing moderator and the akim received the figures with clear scepticism. Aksakalov stated that the information does not correspond to reality, because "firstly, we don't have such territories", and in that case "the entire region should be blazing."
Mathematics, however, suggests the opposite. The area of the Kostanay Region is 196,001 km² (196 billion m²). The burnt territory is 2,300 km² (2.3 billion m²). This is approximately 1.2% of the region's area.
Let us recall that the largest fire occurred in September-October 2025. According to data from the Sentinel-2 and MODIS satellite monitoring systems, the fire covered more than 2.3 billion m² (2,309,351,475 m²). 
The fire hotspots remained active for several weeks, but official sources acknowledged only an insignificant part of the real scale.
The problem, apparently, is not arithmetic. The akim either does not know the exact area of the region he governs, or he does not wish to acknowledge the scale of the ecological catastrophe, which remained for several weeks without due attention from the authorities and the media.
However, the main thing remains unchanged: during the briefing, it was never stated who is responsible for extinguishing the fires, why the data was concealed, and whether there will be consequences for those responsible.