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Luzhniki Stadium reconstruction cost $410m, says Moscow Mayor

Refurbishment on Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, one of the 12 venues due to host games at the 2018 Russia Fifa World Cup, totalled close to $410m.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said yesterday (Tuesday) that the 24 billion rubles ($410m/€344m/£317m) spent to reconstruct the 81,000-capacity stadium makes it the cheapest among the rest of its kind.

Sobayanin added that the money spent on Luzhniki Stadium “was allocated from the municipal budget.”

“It (the stadium) also complies with all international standards, Sobyanin said, according to the Tass news agency. “Luzhniki will be one of the top stadiums in the world in terms of security.”

He added that there will be a two-level security system set up to surround the arena before the tournament kicks off. It includes 3,000 surveillance cameras, around 1,500 sensors, as well as other security equipment elements.

“Luzhniki’s reconstruction works have been completed and we are ready for hosting the tournaments,” Sobyanin said. “We are currently finishing works on the security perimeter. We will commission it (the stadium) ahead of the schedule, by the end of the year.”

The refurbishment began in 2013, and will be complete by May next year. The main goal of the project was to preserve the historical facade of the stadium, which has hosted events such as the 1980 summer Olympic Games, as well as world championships in ice hockey, athletics and rugby and a range of music concerts.

The venue is one of two stadiums in Moscow that have been selected to host the 2018 Fifa World Cup, with the second being the recently-built Spartak Stadium, which opened in 2014.

Luzhniki Stadium will host the opening game of the tournament, as well as one of the semi finals and the final.

The 2018 Fifa World Cup will be held between June 14 and July 15 at 12 different stadiums in 11 host cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.

Image: Own Work