MOSCOW, September 29 (RIA Novosti) - More...

Citing data from the Ministry of Regional Development, Vedomosti said 1.054 trillion rubles will be spent between 2009 and 2012 on the government program on the construction of Olympic facilities, with 699.3 billion rubles allocated from the federal budget.

The new figure greatly exceeds that put forward by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak in July, when he said the construction of sports facilities for the 2014 Winter Olympics would cost Russia 195.3 billion rubles ($6.25 billion).

Kozak said that 102 billion rubles ($3.3 billion) would be allocated from the federal budget and the remaining 93 billion rubles ($2.9 billion) would be provided by investors.

Sochi won the right to host the Olympics at an IOC session in Guatemala in July 2007 after a close race with South Korea"s Pyeongchang and Austria"s Salzburg.

Russia has never hosted the Winter Olympics and Moscow"s hosting of the Summer Games in 1980 was marred by a U.S.-led boycott involving

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