“Father Frost has drafted an application to the Olympic Committee, as wants to be the symbol of that Olympiad,” Vologda Deputy Governor Vladimir Smirnov said.

Father Frost enumerated 21 reasons in favor of his application, including his growing popularity in Russia. Some 104,000 people visited Father Frost’s residence in the town of Veliky Ustyug last year, and another 134,000 in January-October 2007.

Sochi will host the Winter Olympic Games in 2014, and Russia has a federal program of the city development.

Then Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov approved a Sochi development program last August with the purpose of turning that city into a world-class resort. Up to $12 billion investments will be drawn before 2014. The federal and regional budgets will make large investments, while the rest will come from private businesses.

Twelve facilities, including mountain skiing tracks, ski ramps, Russia’ s first bobsleigh track, an ice hockey stadium, and a new central stadium, will be built in Sochi within the next six years. “Sochi will build a new winter sports center, which will host world championships after the 2014 Games,” a source at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry told Itar-Tass.

The power supplies to the Sochi area will grow by 100%, the same as the number of hotel rooms of the three to five-star category. New railroads and motorways will be constructed, and a high-speed railroad line will connect the airport to the mountainous sports facilities.

The engineering network (power lines, water mains and sewage facilities] will be modernized in the Sochi lowlands and highways, and a modern sports infrastructure will be built.

The three-year budget approved by the State Duma assigns funds for preparations for the 2014 Olympic Games, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said earlier. Over 15.9 billion rubles will be assigned from the federal budget for the construction of Sochi Olympic facilities this year. The money will be spent on the infrastructure, sports facilities, transport and so on.

About 314 billion rubles will fund the federal program of the Sochi resort development, including 186 billion assigned from the federal budget and 119 billion in private investments.

Some 116 billion rubles will be spent on the construction of a light metro line, tunnels, motorways and flyovers, he said. “Most of the funds will go for the development of the infrastructure,” the minister said.

Meanwhile, 31 billion rubles will be invested in sports facilities, “which is approximately the cost of similar Olympic preparations in other host cities,” he said.

Forty-nine billion rubles will be spent on electric power facilities, and over 50 billion rubles on the hotels. These would be private funds.

The economic effect of the Sochi Olympiad is estimated at 341 billion rubles by experts. Budgetary revenues will annually grow by 64 billion rubles, including 25 billion deducted to the federal budget.

The architectural image of Sochi will undergo serious changes within the next seven years, a source at the Krasnodar territorial administration told Itar-Tass. “The illegally built facilities within the Olympic zone will be dismantled by court order, while the legal facilities will be brought in correspondence with the general city development concept drafted by the leading architects of the world,” he said.

“Federal and territorial agencies will make an inventory of all buildings within the Olympic zone of Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana,” the source said.

The Federal Environmental, Technological and Atomic Supervisory Service has changed the structure of its Sochi office and enlarged the number of office departments from two to five prior to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, service chief Konstantin Pulikovsky said.

In his words, the service will monitor the energy, construction and environmental safety of the prospective Olympic facilities.

MOSCOW, November 19 (Itar-Tass)