Following the deaths of eight people in the previous 24 hours, 738 people had succumbed to the intense cold since mid-January, the Ukrainian health ministry said.

More than 7,500 people were treated by doctors and 4,464 were admitted to hospital. Many of those who died were homeless, the ministry said.

In Poland, police said the country's coldest winter in nearly 20 years had killed 233 people since October.

"Last week alone, 19 people died of cold. That's an exceptionally high number," police spokeswoman Grazyna Puchalska told AFP.

"The toll has already exceeded the total number of deaths from cold last winter, when 190 people died. And winter is not over yet," she added.

More than 100 of this year's victims were homeless people, and 43 were from the capital, Warsaw, or its suburbs. Many were heavy drinkers.

Temperatures plunged to minus 26 Celsius (minus 15 Fahrenheit) in northeastern Poland at the weekend, while a low of minus 11 C (12 F) was recorded overnight Sunday in Warsaw.

After enjoying relatively mild minus seven C (19 F) conditions in late January, the chill returned to Ukraine at the weekend with the mercury slipping below minus 31 C (minus 24 F) in the northern Sumy region.

Forecasters said the anticyclone gripping Russia was moving into Ukraine and western Europe although temperatures should ease later in the week.

Moscow city officials said they were working on a new round of energy-saving measures as the latest cold snap fuelled fears among European countries which last month experienced shortfalls in deliveries of Russian gas.

Other parts of the Russia were even colder. In the far eastern Kamchatka province temperatures reached minus 47 C (minus 52 F) overnight, while in Magadan province's Severo-Evensk district the temperature was minus 52 C (minus 61 F), the official ITAR-TASS news agency said.

The latter temperature remained above Severo-Evensk's 1964 record low of minus 64 C (minus 83 F), the news agency said.

Yet the World Wildlife Fund said global warming was disturbing the environment in the far eastern Chukotka region, whose governor is billionaire businessman Roman Abramovich.

Hunting on ice had become dangerous due to warming temperatures and deer herds were suffering from unusually warm temperatures, WWF's office in the Russian Far East said.

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