Ironically, the chaos has been caused by a spell of unseasonably warm weather which meant that torrential freezing rain, rather than snow, fell on Saturday, leaving a treacherous layer of ice on pavements, roads and runways.

Moscow's biggest airport, Domodedovo in the south of city, was slowly recovering from a closure of over 12 hours Sunday due to a power outage while the other main city airport, Sheremetyevo, was seeing major delays Monday.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu to do "everything you can and mobilise all units to ease the situation in the airports and transport."

The press, which happily reported on the chaos in other European countries earlier this month caused by a snowfall that would not have raised eyebrows in Russia, was less than happy with the authorities' response to the crisis.

"The capital and its surroundings turned out to be completely unprepared for the weather," said the mass-circulation Moskovsky Komsomolets daily. "A nightmare of ice," said newspaper Trud.

Moscow's new mayor Sergei Sobyanin, under pressure to live up to his enforcer image after taking over from longstanding incumbent Yury Luzhkov this year, vowed that the situation would return to normal Monday.

"The situation was extraordinary," he told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

"A third of the monthly precipitation fell. This would have been fine if it had been just snow. But this was freezing rain which caused electricity, trolleybus and tramlines to freeze up."

He said that some 15,000 units of equipment were mobilised in the city, taking away an astonishing 300,000 cubic metres of snow over the weekend.

The head of Moscow weather service Gidrometeoburo Alexei Lyakhov said the last time there had been such weather in the capital was in December 1979, Interfax reported.

Twenty-seven people were wounded in Moscow by trees that fell down due to ice weighing on their branches, the Interfax news agency said, adding that 22 required hospital treatment.

The ice on pavements and roads turned parts of Moscow into a virtual skating rink over the weekend, leaving old and young sliding and tumbling as they sought to do shopping for the New Year holidays.

Some 1,350 people were hospitalised in the Moscow region over the weekend for ice-related injuries, some two times more than the seasonal average, the Interfax news agency said.

Putin said that 412,000 people were left without light in Moscow and other regions in central Russia although this number had been reduced to 121,000 late Sunday night.

Electricity was partially restored to Domodedovo airport after the power outage and the airport had been able to allow dozens of domestic flights overnight. Officials said the situation could be normalised in the day.

Sheremetyevo, the hub for Russia's flag carrier Aeroflot, experienced severe delays early Monday but the situation was improving by midday. Reports said the problems were caused by a shortage of de-icing agent.

"I think that over the course of the next two days things will return to normal," the head of Russia's aviation agency Rosaviatsia, Alexander Neradko, told Russian news agencies.

But 200 flights were still delayed at the two airports, said Rosaviatsia spokesman Sergei Izvolsky.

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