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 Little is left of the Luzhniki Stadium except its outer walls and
a statue of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin outside as Russia
sets about converting the Soviet-era relic into a state-of-the-art
arena.
Perched beside the River Moskva, it is a symbol of a bigger
transformation President Vladimir Putin wants to showcase at the
World Cup - Russia's development since Soviet days into a modern
state worthy of a seat at the table of top nations.
It is a risky gamble.
The Winter Olympics in Sochi this year put the spotlight on
corruption, cronyism, cost overruns and Russia's record on democracy
and gay rights.
Brazil's experience of hosting this year's World Cup has also proved
sobering, with the focus on building soccer stadiums instead of
national infrastructure causing street protests and the national
team's failure on the pitch leaving a hangover.
 While the Kremlin was able to ban protests in Sochi during the
Olympics, tolerating them only in a designated area far from the
sporting action, a blanket ban will be harder to enforce in 11
cities during the World Cup finals.
Putin will be particularly vulnerable to demonstrations in Moscow
and St Petersburg, scene of the biggest rallies during a wave of
protests against him in the winter of 2011-12.
"It's a double-edged sword. These state events attract attention and
are a good chance to showcase a country, but there is no end of
downsides in terms of bad publicity," said Allison Stewart,
associate fellow in the BT Centre for Major Programme Management at
the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School.
Although he is less directly associated with the World Cup than he
was with the Sochi Olympics, Putin's own personal and political
prestige will be at stake. This is particularly important as his
six-year presidential term ends in 2018 and he could run in an
election a few months before the finals.
Putin was in Brazil for this year's final and sent officials to the
tournament to prepare for 2018, but it is not clear whether Moscow
has learnt lessons from its experience of hosting the Sochi Games
and Brazil's problems in staging the World Cup.
"There doesn't seem to have been any soul-searching in Russia to
really understand why the cost of the Games was so much more
significant than it was originally meant to be. If they have done
it, they certainly haven’t communicated it," said Stewart, who
conducts research on events such as the Olympics.
 Although winning the right to host the Winter Olympics and the World
Cup in quick succession stirred national pride, Moscow has faced
calls for the finals to be played elsewhere because of its role in
the Ukraine crisis and media allegations that the World Cup bidding
process is marred by foul play.
Republican U.S. senators Dan Coates and Mark Kirk cited Yugoslavia's
exclusion from the 1992 European Championship and 1994 World Cup
over the wars in the Balkans when they pressed such demands in a
letter to soccer's governing body FIFA.
"It's absurd! Russia has a stable social and political system. There
is no point in putting forward this argument. Russia won the right
to host the tournament fairly and is a faithful partner," Sports
Minister Vitaly Mutko told Reuters.
OPPOSITION FEARS RUSSIA WILL GO BANKRUPT
Russia will host the 2018 World Cup in 12 stadiums in 11 cities,
with Games being played at two stadiums in Moscow.
The most westerly venue is Kaliningrad, the main city in an exclave
next to Poland and Lithuania, and the furthest east will be
Yekaterinburg, the city in the Ural mountains where the last tsar
was shot dead shortly after the 1918 Bolshevik revolution.
Others are Volgograd, which was hit by two suicide bombings that
killed 32 people plus the bombers in December, Kazan, Samara, Sochi,
Saransk, St Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Rostov-on-Don, near the
border with Ukraine.
 The Sports Ministry said in March that hosting the World Cup would
cost 620.5 billion roubles ($18.16 billion), with 172.6 billion
being spent on building and upgrading sports facilities and the rest
of the sum going on infrastructure development. But Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev has said the World Cup will probably cost Russia
more than $20 billion and critics say costs are likely to spiral, as
they did for the Sochi Games.
Russia has not said how much the Winter Olympics cost in the end but
the figure of $51 billion cited by media is more than four times the
$12 billion price tag of Russia's initial bid.
Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader, said the costs could be
unsustainable for a country already on the verge of recession, with
capital flight of $75 billion in the first half of 2014 and possibly
facing more Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.
"All of these factors, the geopolitical madness and sanctions, are
of course a path to Russia's bankruptcy," Nemtsov said.
He also said contracts for the stadiums and other infrastructure
were open to corruption following critics' accusations that Olympic
deals went to Putin's allies.
"What is most important now is public control over the money. Putin
has not instituted any big criminal case over theft at the
Olympics," he said.
The Kremlin has denied criticism over the handling of the
construction contracts for the Sochi Games.
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"Our country has a rich history of holding major sports tournaments,
and this will be something special," Mutko said.
MURKY WATER
Not everyone shares his certainty, not even every soccer official.
Some locals also wonder whether the national team is up to the job
of showcasing Russian football after failing to get past the initial
round in Brazil despite having a highly paid and experienced coach
in Italy's Fabio Capello.
"Our football is like murky water, a gateway for corruption. This is
not going to go away in the run-up to the 2018 World Cup," said
Alisher Aminov, president of the national Fund for the Development
of Football.
Aminov, a candidate for the presidency of the Russian Football
Union, also foresaw financial problems hosting the World Cup so soon
after the Winter Olympics, a problem only slightly less daunting
than Brazil's hosting the 2016 Olympics only two years after the
World Cup.
"The question we need to ask is does our country need the World Cup
and other major events?" he said. "So far the government has
allocated 620 billion roubles on the World Cup from the federal
budget, but this figure will rise. Will there be transparency?
Unfortunately experience from the Winter Olympics in Sochi shows
this is unlikely."
Aminov described the poor state of soccer in Russia as a "reflection
of the country as a whole", an alarming statement for Putin and his
hopes of showcasing Russia at the tournament.
Aminov's remarks may also worry international sponsors, especially
after Russia attracted bad publicity at Sochi over a law banning the
spread of "gay propaganda" among minors.
There were, in the end, no mass protests in Sochi and no attacks by
groups fighting an insurgency against Moscow in the North Caucasus
region near Sochi. But preventing such protests and guaranteeing
security will be harder at a World Cup played in several cities
spread over thousands of kilometers (miles).
Putin has promised to waive visas for fans but transport could be
costly and time-consuming for visitors.
Almost no Western leaders attended the Sochi Olympics in February
and the United States and the European Union have imposed visa bans
and asset freezes on some Russian officials and firms since then
over the Ukraine crisis.
But Mutko is upbeat about 2018 and says preparations are on track,
including financing and construction, with work under way on five
stadiums and due to start soon on the last seven.
SPIRIT OF 1956
At the Luzhniki Stadium, which will host the opening match as well
as the final, only a skeleton remains of what was once the Central
Lenin Stadium which opened in 1956 and hosted the opening ceremony
of 1980 Olympics at the height of the Cold War.
Men in hard hats and overalls are busy at work, with brightly
colored seats piled out inside and outside the stadium after being
ripped out for the makeover.
It is intended to be a modern stadium that will impress the world
but chief construction supervisor Murat Akhmadiyev said inside the
stadium: "The spirit of 1956, of the opening of the Olympics, will
be preserved here."
The cost of renovating the stadium is estimated by city authorities
at 19 billion roubles - a snip when compared to the stadium in St
Petersburg, expected to cost 35 billion roubles.
After the World Cup, some stadiums will be handed to local
authorities and are intended to make money as well as develop sport
across the country, a move that follows Putin's decision to revive a
Soviet-era national sport and health program.
Many Russians are proud to be hosting the World Cup.
"I think we've got it all ... It's only the cities that we need to
bring up to scratch - bus stops and all that - so that when
foreigners come, they say: 'Wow, Russia is so beautiful',' said a
Moscow resident who gave his name only as Kirill.
(Writing by Timothy Heritage; editing by Janet McBride)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
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