Orthodox Christians in Russia marked the feast day of Epiphany on Sunday with a traditional dip into icy water even as local emergencies issued weather warnings.<\/p>\n
Local media showed people bathing in Novosibirsk, Murmansk, and South Ossetia, as well as Russian soldiers purportedly in Ukraine\u2019s Kherson region immersing themselves in water.<\/p>\n
However, unusually warm winter temperatures prompted local emergency services in some regions to cancel events, saying that the ice was simply too thin for worshippers to bathe safely.<\/p>\n
Ceremonies were cancelled in areas as distant as the southern Russian region of Saratov to Karelia, almost 1,600 kilometres away on the country\u2019s border with Finland.<\/p>\n One believer, Alexander Solomatin, who came to Moscow from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where it was too warm for the traditional ice hole dipping, said he could hardly find a place to bathe even in the Russian capital. \u201cEverything in Moscow had melted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Temperatures across Russia have been increasing over the past quarter of a century in line with global warming. According to Leonid Starkov, a meteorologist who works for Moscow\u2019s Gismeteo, the average temperature significantly exceeds the norm.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are already seeing a thaw in St. Petersburg. In Moscow, we are seeing a thaw. And in southern Russia, the temperature is already reaching 5 degrees or 10 degrees Celsius,\u201d said Starkov.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/750x500_cmsv2_63eac804-9522-54be-970e-d8a8c89b0080-8984784-300x200.webp\")