Nearly half the tickets for Milan Cortina Olympics still unsold with 2 months to go

ROME (AP) — Construction on the main hockey arena is still not finished. Spectator and media areas at the controversial sliding venue also need to be completed.

And with exactly two months to go to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, there is another major area that local organizers are concentrating on: only slightly more than half of the 1.5 million tickets for the games have been sold.

As the torch relay began in Rome on Saturday, just over 850,000 tickets had been sold.

While sales abroad are meeting expectations, interest among Italians remains low.

“That’s normal. The local fans get interested closer and I think the beginning of the torch relay will be a very important moment for people realizing that,” local organizing committee CEO Andrea Varnier told The Associated Press moments before the relay began.

A Black Friday promotion last week included three days of 20% discounts on tickets. And purchasers of both Olympics and Paralympics tickets have the chance to get lift passes for eight euros ($9) valid at every ski area in Lombardy between Dec. 9-22.

This week, more tickets for the Feb. 6 opening ceremony at the San Siro stadium and the men’s hockey gold medal game on Feb. 22 in Milan were put on sale.

“We had some tickets on the market a couple of days ago and they were sold out in in just a couple of hours,” Varnier said. “So there is interest.”

If past precedence is any indicator, the atmosphere was memorable at the 2006 Turin Winter Games — the last time Italy hosted an Olympics.

Still, organizers would have hoped for more demand after the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022 were held mostly without fans because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Varnier pointed out that sales have been strong at the recently opened Milan Cortina store in front of the city’s cathedral, Piazza del Duomo.

“People are really going in and buying our merchandise, which is also a good sign,” he said.

As for the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena — the new, 16,000-seat venue on the outskirts of Milan — the scheduled test event for next week had to be pushed back to January.

“We knew about the delays of the hockey arena and we are working with it, but now we are following the right pace,” Varnier said. “It has to be ready.”

Next week, the secondary hockey venue that has been set up in the Rho Fiera convention center will be tested by hosting under-20 world championship games.

These games will be held across a large swath of northern Italy and athlete parades for the opening ceremony will also be held simultaneously in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Livigno and Predazzo besides Milan.

“It is quite an effort, it’s the first time ever,” Varnier said. “It’s a very important message to have the athletes also staying in the mountain Villages to be able to participate in the ceremony. This was very well received by the NOCs (National Olympic Committees). … Also, the communities are very happy to have a piece of the ceremonies in their towns.”

Andrew Dampf is at https://x.com/AndrewDampf

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Italian swimmer Gregorio Paltrinieri lights the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics torch in Rome as it begins its journey through Italy, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, a journey that will conclude in Milan in February 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Italian President Sergio Mattarella holds the torch and lights the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics cauldron in front of the Quirinale Presidential Palace, in Rome, Friday Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Italian high jumper and Olympic gold medalist Gianmarco Tamberi, left, receives the flame of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics torch from Italian former foil fencer and Olympic and world champion Elisa Di Francisca in Rome as it begins its journey through Italy, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, a journey that will conclude in Milan in February 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Italian swimmer Gregorio Paltrinieri carries the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics torch in Rome as it begins its journey through Italy, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, a journey that will conclude in Milan in February 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Italian former foil fencer and Olympic and world champion Elisa Di Francisca carries the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics torch in Rome as it begins its journey through Italy, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, a journey that will conclude in Milan in February 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a major missile and drone barrage on Ukraine overnight into Saturday, after U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they’ll meet on Saturday for a third day of talks aimed at ending the nearly 4-year-old war,

Following talks that made progress on a security framework for postwar Ukraine, the two sides also offered the sober assessment that any “real progress toward any agreement” ultimately will depend “on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace.”

The statement from U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov came after they met for a second day in Florida on Friday. They offered only broad brushstrokes about the progress they say has been made as Trump pushes Kyiv and Moscow to agree to a U.S.-mediated proposal to end the war.

Russia used 653 drones and 51 missiles in the wide-reaching overnight attack on Ukraine, which triggered air raid alerts across the country and came as Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day, the country’s air force said Saturday morning.

Ukrainian forces shot down and neutralized 585 drones and 30 missiles, the air force said, adding that 29 locations were struck.

At least eight people were wounded in the attacks, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko said.

Among these, at least three people were wounded in the Kyiv region, according to local officials. Drone sightings were reported as far west as Ukraine’s Lviv region.

Russia carried out a “massive missile-drone attack” on power stations and other energy infrastructure in several Ukrainian regions, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant temporarily lost all off-site power overnight, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday, citing its Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi.

The plant is in an area that has been under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shut-down reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that energy facilities were the main targets of the attacks, also noting that a drone strike had “burned down” the train station in the city of Fastiv, located in the Kyiv region.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its air defenses had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight into Saturday.

Russian Telegram news channel Astra said Ukraine struck Russia’s Ryazan Oil Refinery, sharing footage appearing to show a fire breaking out and plumes of smoke rising above the refinery. The Associated Press could not independently verify the video.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces later said Ukrainian forces had struck the refinery. Ryazan regional Gov. Pavel Malkov said a residential building had been damaged in a drone attack and that drone debris had fallen on the grounds of an “industrial facility,” but did not mention the refinery.

Months of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries have aimed to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue the war. Meanwhile, Kyiv and its western allies say Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing” the cold.

The latest round of attacks came as U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisers and Ukrainian officials said they’ll meet for a third day of talks on Saturday, after making progress on finding agreement on a security framework for postwar Ukraine.

Following Friday’s talks, the two sides also offered the sober assessment that any “real progress toward any agreement” ultimately will depend “on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace.”

The statement from U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov came after they met for a second day in Florida on Friday. They offered only broad brushstrokes about the progress they say has been made as Trump pushes Kyiv and Moscow to agree to a U.S.-mediated proposal to end nearly four years of war.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Workers and military inspect Ukrainian Fire Point's Flamingo missiles during handover to the military in an undisclosed location in Ukraine Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)