Officials in Nizhniy Novgorod and Kaliningrad said that Russian stadium construction for '18 is "ahead of schedule and the stadia will be delivered in advance of deadlines," according to Paul Nicholson of INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL. The two cities are "both building new stadiums for the World Cup." Nizhny Novgorod Region Governor Valery Shantsev said that the Volga Arena in Nizhniy Novgorod will be completed "two months ahead of the scheduled date." He said, "The stadium's ahead-of-the-schedule construction will allow us to focus on higher quality preparations for hosting the matches of the international football championship." Nizhny Novgorod is spending a total of $1.6B on World Cup 2018 preparations with $388M allocated from the federal budget for the construction of the Volga Arena, a new Customs Service's building, reconstruction of the Dinamo stadium as well as the upgrading of the local airport's landing strip. Kaliningrad Governor Nikolay Ciukanov said that construction of the 35,000-capacity stadium on Oktiabrskiy island could start in July this year. Ciukanov said that "there will be no problem in delivering the stadium" by the end of '17 (INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL, 5/18).
