Arenas in Kaliningrad (contractor Crocus Group of Aras Agalarov), Volgograd (Strongtransgaz of Gennady Timchenko) and Yekaterinburg (Sinara-Development of Dmitry Pumlyansky) may be removed from the 2018 FIFA World Cup program, Kommersant reports.
Volgograd has no suitable transportation and hotel infrastructure, and the constructors of the Kaliningrad and Yekaterinburg stadiums risk exceeding the budget of 15 billion rubles granted for the World Cup. No decisions have been made so far, according to President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The final decision will be made in September 2014. Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said that there was only a concept to organize the World Cup at 12 stadiums (in Moscow, Kaliningrad, Saint-Petersburg, Volgograd, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi and Yekaterinburg).
FIFA President Sepp Blatter said that the number of stadiums could be reduced to 10. The final stages of the 2018 FIFA World Cup will take place on June 8 – July 8, 2018.
