By Paul Nicholson
July 1 – Could there be a gentle thawing of political and business relations between the West and East – at least the European West? And is the 2018 World Cup the bridge to a wider and renewed co-operation with Russia?
The Consul General of the Netherlands in St Petersburg, Hans Vesseling, has offered to help Kaliningrad to prepare for the 2018 World Cup.
Vesseling made this offer during a meeting with the deputy chairman of the region Mikhail Pliyuxin.
Considering the current geopolitical situation, the Consul General proposed to develop relations between the regions by establishing business relationships between companies in Kaliningrad and Holland, with how the Dutch could help Kaliningrad prepare for the 2018 World Cup.
The Russian response seems positive with Pliyuxin noting that the Netherlands hosted European championships in 2000 and that it has expertise in the area of traffic and transport infrastructure.
With the halving in value of the ruble in foreign currency markets at the end of last year, Russian organisers started a programme of import substitution of foreign materials for Russian manufactured product. Now the ruble has hardened – it has regained half of its losses – the fear of the foreign costs are not so great, especially if that comes with a realism on cost from non-Russian suppliers. This was a theme that also came out of the World Football Forum in Moscow earlier this month.
Kaliningrad is the least progressed of the Russian cities that will host the finals which will played in 12 venues across 11 cities.
The construction of the stadium in Kaliningrad is now scheduled to begin in the second half of August, with central government planning approval is expected to be received in July.
The stadium will be on Oktiabrskiy island should have an access road completed by mid-August as well as having the main groundwork engineering completed, thus enabling the actual construction of the sports complex to begin. The general contractor is the Crocus Group which is expected to submit the final construction plan by the end of July to central government.
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