With "just over two years to go" before the kickoff of the 2018 World Cup, "hundreds of hard-hat clad workers brave Moscow's subzero temperatures to rebuild the tournament's flagship stadium," which officials say could be completed "ahead of schedule," according to the AFP. The Luzhniki stadium is now undergoing "a major facelift" to host the World Cup final, as well as the opening match and the tournament's second semifinal. Foreman Murat Akhmadiyev said, "The stadium should be ready during the second quarter of 2017, according to FIFA deadlines." Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said last week that the work on the venue -- which hosted the opening ceremony of the 1980 Moscow Olympics -- was going at a "very good pace" and that it "could be completed earlier than planned." Akhmadiyev said that work "was going at a frantic pace, with 1,600 labourers working round-the-clock in 12-hour shifts." While officials "remain sanguine about Luzhniki, progress on some of Russia's other World Cup venues is not so rapid." The general contractor building the St. Petersburg Stadium in the former Imperial capital requested an additional 435M rubles ($5.47M) from local authorities after the Russian currency "lost around half its value" in '14. Company Dir Vitaly Lazutkin said in a statement on Monday, "We are now in February 2016 and we are building with 2013 prices." In the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between EU members Poland and Lithuania, "workers only last month began laying the foundations of a new stadium." And in Nizhny Novgorod, construction on a 45,000-seat stadium "began less than a year ago" (AFP, 2/3).
