A major fire which engulfed the Izvestia Hall building on Pushkin Square in Moscow has been extinguished, Russia’s Emergency Ministry has said.
Multiple fire brigades were deployed to the scene when the blaze broke out at 5 am on Thursday.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but at least one person received burns to his hands and another man has reportedly gone missing – colleagues are unable to contact him and fear he could be inside.
The fire started in the building’s inner courtyard and quickly spread, with the nearby Residence bar and Lookin Rooms nightclub completely destroyed, according to media reports.
Three out of four lanes along Tverskaya Street leading to the Garden Ring and one lane of four along Bolshoy Putinkovsky Lane have been closed to traffic due to the fire. The entrance to the nearby Pushkinskaya metro station was briefly closed.
Some 70 highly flammable gas cylinders are believed to be stored inside the building, and were at risk of exploding if the blaze had reached them, sources say.
Izvestia Hall is a popular event venue, a ten-minute walk from the Kremlin. Constructed between 1925 and 1927, it contained the printing house and editorial office of “Izvestia” for nearly 85 years, until the newspaper moved to a new site in 2011. The reconstruction of the historical part of the building was completed in 2018.