Muscovites lamenting a record-breaking January freeze aren't just battling plummeting temperatures: they're also being mocked by their fellow countrymen.
Moscow's Emergency Situations Ministry told residents on Friday that temperatures would drop as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius during the night of Jan. 7-8, warning that abnormal frosts may affect the city's power grid in some areas.
"This is what it's like here today," journalist Michael Nacke wrote on Twitter, "But [Game of Thrones character John] Snow is a fool, he hasn't got a hat!"
Yet even as Muscovites have taken to social media to vent their wintertime woes, Russians from across the country's colder climes began mocking their softer countrymen in the capital.
"It's a rare day when the tweets of frozen Muscovites warm all of Russia," artist Artyom Loskutov from Novosibirsk wrote on Twitter.
Many Siberians were keen to show their friends in the capital a real Russian winter. Ilya Yablokov in the Siberian city of Tomsk shared this post on Facebook, showing the temperature hovering at a cool minus 46 degrees. "I'm heading all this whining from Muscovites about the weather," he wrote. "I just want to show them this."
Moscow politician Vladimir Milov, originally from Kemerovo, was less amused, writing, "Today my news feed is filled with the traditional Siberian and Ural bullying about the Moscow "frost" (-25). Nice to know they love Muscovites."
Russian political activist Natalia Pelevina, possibly left speechless due to the bitter cold, simply posted a picture of the Mona Lisa bundled up in a warm blanket.
The Moscow government has advised residents to avoid going outdoors as much as possible and to wear appropriate clothing.
Temperatures in the capital are expected to rise to a balmy minus 19 by Monday Jan. 9.
