Russian Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov has instructed rescue teams to extend the search for bodies and wreckage from a plane that crashed in Egypt to an area of 40 square kilometers.
Puchkov said on November 4 that drones and space monitoring systems would be used to scan the terrain.
Officials said the Russian rescue teams had already examined an area of 30 square kilometers around the crash site.
Metrojet's Airbus A321-200 went down over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on October 31 after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh en route to St. Petersburg.
All 224 people on board, most of them Russians, were killed.
The aircraft is thought to have broken up in mid-air.
Egyptian investigators together with experts from Russia and Ireland, where the Airbus was registered, have been examining the flight recorders.
