Just like a year earlier, the dwellers of Yekaterinburg are evaluating the city in terms of its strong and weak points that could attract or put off high-profile visitors to the place.
The Urals’ capital was listed among the cities that will host the world football championship in 2018. There are thirteen cities on the list altogether: Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Kazan, Saransk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Sochi, and Yekaterinburg.
The matches will be played at the Central Stadium which will be fully restored next year. The public feels the stadium’s downtown location is an advantage, but a detention ward nearby is definitely a problem.
For one thing, the ward is already notorious for prisoners escaping it – one such instance occurred as recently as this year. A few years ago, a whole group of people tried to flee the place, which resulted in shooting and left some people dead.
Then, long lines of relatives who come with food or cigarettes for the detained and wait for their turn certainly do not make the area look any prettier.
The detention ward is bound to become Yekaterinburg’s main hindrance. It is unclear whether the ward can actually be demolished, but it is already obvious that FIFA will be less than thrilled with a neighbor like this.