MOSCOW — The authorities in Moscow had spent millions on Christmas trees, sparkling lights and other holiday decorations, but the festive mood was still missing something: Winter weather.

As the warmest December on record drew to a close, little snow had fallen, so the city made artificial snow and trucked it to parts of the city center — and much of it quickly melted into slush. Images of trucks unloading snow spread fast on social media, as observers ridiculed the government for spending money on something that usually just falls from the sky.

“With the Moscow budget, you can buy anything, even winter,” one user wrote on Twitter, pointing to the vast wealth disparity between the capital and the rest of Russia. “Let’s install freezing machines along the Tverskaya,” another one wrote, referring to the city’s main thoroughfare, where the authorities said the snow would be used to build a hill for snowboarders.