By Paul Nicholson
August 27 – Spartak Moscow’s new stadium will be opened today with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev attending the opening ceremony. Putin will tour the stadium and discuss preparations for the 2018 World Cup.
22 August – With Russia rapidly putting in place preparations to host the world’s football community in 2018 for the FIFA World Cup, early movers can get a head start in the market at the World Football Forum that will be held at Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, November 13.
August 22 – Speaking in Saransk, Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko again repeated that there would be no change to the number of cities hosting the 2018 World Cup and that it would remain as 11, with a further 20 cities hosting national teams.
By Paul Nicholson
August 20 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has turned down a FIFA proposal to reduce the number of stadiums and cities that will host the 2018 World Cup. FIFA president Sepp Blatter met with Russian president Vladimir Putin as well as Mutko in Sochi last weekend and suggested a possible reduction.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 18 – The head of Russia’s 2018 World Cup organising committee has broken his silence over calls in some quarters for the country to be stripped of host status as a result of the widely condemned military and political intervention in Ukraine.
August 18 – A survey by the Russian Foundation of Public Opinion found that the overwhelming majority of Russians believe that holding the 2018 World Cup in Russia will promote interest in sport and a healthy lifestyle.
August 14 – Russia’s EMERCOM (The Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters), has begun preparations for the 2018 World Cup and says it will draw on the experiences of the Brazil World Cup, the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2013 Kazan University Olympiade in its planning.
August 13 – Details of Russia’s stadium build for the 2018 World Cup are starting to be released. The Saransk Arena has now had official planning approval while August will see completion of the Spartak Moscow stadium.
By Paul Nicholson
August 12 – Russia’s prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has called for a close monitoring of the costs of building the infrastructure for the 2018 World Cup, following the financial plan that already exists. He also insisted that the preparations should be made to the highest standards and that the experience of hosting a successful Olympics has shown the way in this regard.
August 7- Indications that Volgograd will retain host status for the Russia 2018 World Cup could not have been stronger with the announcement that the Zenit sports complex in the city will receive 56 million rubles ($1.5 million) for reconstruction enabling it to become one of the training centres for the tournament.
By Paul Nicholson
August 5 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has reacted quickly to comments coming from Russian construction company Stroitransgaz, owned by Gennadiy Timchenko, which said that the company would pull out of the build of the stadiums in Volgograd and in Nizhniy Novgorod if the government did not increase the budget available.
August 4 – Moscow’s regional governor Andrei Vorobyov has confirmed that 12 training sites will be upgraded for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
By Paul Nicholson
August 1 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has said that the 2018 World Cup will be played in 12 stadiums across 11 cities, and that there is no need to reduce the number of venues.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 1 – Former US presidential candidate John McCain has added his voice to calls for Russia to be stripped of the 2018 World Cup finals because of the Malaysian Airlines disaster and Russian support for separatists in the east of Ukraine.
By Paul Nicholson
July 29 – With Russia and its 2018 World Cup hosting having become a focus of political comment in the West, in the East the Russians have remained focused on their task of delivering 2018. In recent days new stadia have been started and the debate over whether the number of host cities has intensified with sports minister Vitaly Mutko (pictured) currently on the road visiting the cities under threat.