RFE/RL reports that recent heavy snowfall threatens to plunge Armenia into another energy crisis. With temperatures set to drop to -13°C this weekend, an increased gasification of apartments in Yerevan would have spared many families the ridiculously high cost of heating their homes with electricity were it not for two explosions that have disrupted supplies of gas to Armenia through Georgia.

At the same time, the Yerevan Municipality has failed to cope with the snowfall, and RFE/RL reports that the situation is even worse in other areas of the country. Flights arriving and departing from Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport have also been affected and some reportedly cancelled.

Snow has fallen on the country in record amounts for almost a week, piling up to between 80 and 110 centimeters in some of its mountainous regions. It stood at 55 centimeters in the Armenian capital, according to the national meteorological service. “This is above the height of snow registered in Yerevan in the past 100 years,” its director, Albert Torosian, told RFE/RL on Thursday.

City authorities have faced a barrage of media criticism for their failure to effectively deal with the emergency. Many streets in Yerevan remain covered in snow and few snow ploughs have been seen at work so far. The municipality has urged motorists to avoid driving during night hours. There are also regular reports of snow blocking mountain passes and other sections of major roads outside the capital.

No doubt the scenes from inside and outside the capital are very pretty, but the disruption of gas supplies now appears to be taking on a political dimension.

The freezing weather could have hardly come at a worse time. Armenia and neighboring Georgia have been facing their worst energy crises in years since last Sunday’s explosions in southern Russia that knocked out the pipeline shipping natural gas to the two South Caucasus nations.

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The Russian prosecutor’s office had said on Wednesday that the two explosions were a terrorist attack carried out by Islamist militants operating across the Russian North Caucasus. However, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili alleges that Moscow itself organized the sabotage to punish his pro-Western administration. Russian officials have strongly denied the charges.

RFE/RL’s Press Review notes that Armenian politicians are also beginning to smell a rat.

Interviewed by “Haykakan Zhamanak,” a senior member of the opposition Hanrapetutyun party, Smbat Ayvazian, backs Georgia’s allegations that the explosions on the Russian gas pipeline were a deliberate act of “sabotage” ordered by Moscow. Ayvazian says Russia forced Armenia to play its game by cutting electricity supplies to Georgia. Armenia, he claims, thus became an additional “tool for punishing Georgia.”

“Azg” notes that repairs on the pipeline are taking much longer than was expected. The paper says Russian officials initially promised to restore it by Tuesday.

“168 Zham” says the gas dispute has raised the prospect of a “revision of Russian-Armenian relations” not just in the energy but also other spheres.

“Haykakan Zhamanak” warns that a cutoff in gas supplies to the population would have “unpredictable consequences.” The paper argues that hundreds of thousands of households would switch to using electricity for heating purposes and thereby place Armenia’s national power grid under enormous strain.

Thank god that the shelter for the homeless that would not have been opened until the summer is now operating to some extent. As for the Mayor’s Office failing to do its job in clearing the snow from Yerevan’s roads, locals suspect that this is down to the fact that he fears he will be dismissed soon anyway. Hard to tell if this true, but just passing on “word from the street.”