© REUTERS/ALEXANDER PANCHENKOA car uplifted by the roots of a fallen tree in Moscow.
Pictures posted on social media showed uprooted trees, shattered bus shelters and a construction crane that blew over in the storm.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin offered his condolences to the victims and said that several hundred trees were uprooted. "We are taking the necessary measures to deal with the consequences," he said on Twitter.
"The hurricane was unprecedented for Moscow," TASS news agency quoted him as saying.
He said hundreds of trees were toppled, as meteorologists reported winds of up to 80kmh.
News agencies reported falling trees and street lights had blocked roads and metro railways.
Moscow is usually spared such extreme weather, though high winds are not unusual in the region in the summer months.
The death toll was the highest due to storms in the capital in a single day for almost 20 years.
Between eight and 11 people died in storm in the capital in 1998.
Reuters
Comment: Monday's storm is one of the deadliest on record in the Russian capital. Nine people died and 165 were injured in the city in a similar disaster in 1998, while at least nine people were killed in a storm in 1904.
"Winds gusted as high as 70 mph during the storm, which is rare for Moscow," said weather.com meteorologist Brian Donegan. A top emergency official said that 60,000 people in Russia's Stavropol region are being evacuated due to the threat of flooding.
Update 30 May 2017, 21.30 CET
The latest figures place the death toll at 16, with at least another hundred people injured, and the number of fallen trees at 27,000. And it was all over in just ten minutes...
This was therefore the worst storm to hit Moscow in living memory, and probably the worst since the 19th century.