The organizers of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia have responded to economic pressures by reducing operating budgets in some of the host cities for the tournament. The stadiums will be saved, but the reductions will take place elsewhere.

Russia, battling against the economic crisis, wants to trim the costs in hosting the FIFA World Cup, cutting spending by 27 billion rubles (440 million euros). Affected by the cuts above all were the construction of team bases, but also hotels for FIFA guests, fans and journalists reports sports news website "sport-express.ru."

The Russian Sports Ministry published a list of 25 objects on website "regulation.gov.gu" which would be lost. There will be changes in 23 other projects and the total cost of the World Cup to be reduced to 637.6 billion rubles (about 10.5 billion euros).

Especially affected by these cuts is the city of Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga where 14 of the hotels planned for travelling supporters will be cancelled. The cities of Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don and Saransk must accept budgets reductions.

According to the Ministry, the savings are exclusively from budgets of "legal persons." The expenditure of the state budget at 336 billion rubles (around 5.5 billion euros) should remain unchanged.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko had already announced in January that the number of fixed seats inside stadiums would be reduced from 45,000 to 35,000 with the approval of FIFA, the world's governing association.

The 2018 World Cup is planned to take place across 11 Russian cities between June 14 and July 15, 2018.

rd/asz,apc (dpa, SID)