Russia is desperate to control its spending on the 2018 World Cup, and a farmer might just have the answer — straw.
In a project straight out of the "Three Little Pigs" fairytale, Roman Ponomaryov has built a straw replica of the 43 billion ruble ($700 million) stadium in St. Petersburg which will host World Cup semifinals.
Roman Ponomarev has built a straw replica made of 4,500 straw bales. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Stashevskyi)
His arena made of 4,500 straw bales comes with tiered seating for 300 and flagpoles. It hosted its first tournament — for local teams only — last weekend using modified soccer rules.
"It's good to get people excited and create a sports atmosphere ahead of the World Cup," Ponomaryov said in a recent interview.
The arena is a straw replica of the $700 million stadium. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Stashevskyi)
The real St. Petersburg Stadium has drawn ire for its cost, corruption scandals, delays, and workers' deaths.
Ponomaryov is a fan of the Zenit St. Petersburg club and says he modeled his straw stadium on Zenit's new home in a gentle dig at the problems around the construction."It seemed pretty strange ... how the cost of the stadium and its construction timeframe were increasing," he said.
People played football at the straw arena in 2016. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Stashevskyi)
Russia's total World Cup budget is around $10.7 billion. Zenit has accepted the straw stadium with good humor, offering Ponomaryov a ticket to a game at the real thing.
People enjoyed the straw arena . (AP Photo/Oleksandr Stashevskyi)
The harvest will keep him on the farm for the next few weeks, though, and he has in mind another project — organizing a Straw World Cup.
-AP
BERLIN (AP) — The public prosecutor general's office in Munich on Monday took over the investigation into the stabbing deaths of two Ukrainian men in southern Germany because of a possible political motivation for the crime, German news agency dpa reported.
The two Ukrainians, who were 23 and 36 years old and lived in the southern German county of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, were killed at a shopping center in the village of Murnau in Upper Bavaria on Saturday evening. A short time later, police arrested a 57-year-old Russian on suspicion of murder, dpa reported.
“The motive for the crime is currently still unclear. However, a political motivation cannot be ruled out and investigations are being carried out in all directions,” the Munich public prosecutor general’s office said Monday afternoon, dpa reported.
The public prosecutor general's office usually takes over investigations from regular prosecutors if there is a possible political motive for a crime. The Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism is also involved in the investigation, dpa reported.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that it appeared the two men were military servicemen undergoing medical rehabilitation in Germany.
The names of the victims and the suspect weren’t released in line with German privacy rules. The motive for the killings isn't yet known, authorities said.
According to an initial investigation, the three men knew each other, but further details need to be verified, local police spokesperson Stefan Sonntag told dpa. There were also indications that all three men had consumed alcohol.
“We have clear evidence that the suspect was under the influence of alcohol,” Sonntag was quoted as saying.
A spokesperson for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday expressed concern about the killings.
“This is a worrying incident, no question about it. The circumstances must now be investigated more closely," Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin.
“We can only speculate about the motives at the moment," he added. "But it is clear that we cannot tolerate such a thing on German soil anyway and that the Ukrainians, Ukrainians who have fled to us from the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, must now be safe.”
More than 1 million Ukrainian refugees have come to Germany since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Germany is also home to a significant Russian immigrant community and 2.5 million Russians of German ancestry who mostly moved to the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Associated Press journalist Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
Investigators in killing of 2 Ukrainians in Germany are looking into a possible political motive
Flowers and a small Ukrainian flag are laid at a shopping center in Murnau, Germany, Sunday, April 28, 2024. Police say two Ukrainian men have been stabbed to death in southern Germany and a Russian man was arrested by authorities as a possible suspect in the killings. German news agency dpa reported Sunday that the two Ukrainians, who were 23 and 36 years old and lived in the southern German county of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, were killed on the premises of a shopping center in the village of Murnau in Upper Bavaria. (Constanze Wilz/dpa via AP)
Investigators in killing of 2 Ukrainians in Germany are looking into a possible political motive
