Severe winter snowfall overnight in Moscow has brought traffic in the Russian capital to a near halt, local media reported Tuesday.
Reports say that 26 centimetres of new snow have fallen since Monday. That's on top of the 216 centimetres of snow that have fallen since the beginning of December - one and half times more than the average for this time period.
"We haven't seen such a winter in 100 years," the Interfax news agency quoted Moscow's Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov as saying.
There have been around 3,400 traffic accidents since Monday, Moscow traffic police reported. Traffic jams throughout the city have reached a total length of 3,500 kilometres, the equivalent of the distance between Moscow and Madrid.
Meteorologists expect more snow to fall in the coming days.