With Moscow’s historic squares, pedestrian malls — and, starting today, soccer stadiums — filling up with foreign tourists, President Vladimir Putin’s latest rebranding exercise for Russia is well underway.
The first game of the World Cup kicks off at 6 p.m. local time in the refurbished and freshly re-turfed Luzhniki Stadium on the Moscow River.
After years of weak economic growth caused in part by Western sanctions and deteriorating political relations with most NATO and European countries, Russia desperately wants to demonstrate that Western isolation failed to crush its spirit or lessen its ability to put on a great show with the whole world watching.
Canadian soccer mom Leticia Mandrier says her first impressions of the event and the country have surpassed her expectations.
“I am really pleasantly surprised,” she told CBC News, as she watched her 11-year-old twins play in a youth soccer tournament in Moscow that’s associated with the World Cup.
Her family, from the Montreal suburb of Ahuntsic, won an all-expenses-paid trip to take part in the event sponsored by Russian oil giant Gazprom.
