The Russian sports ministry has selected a state controlled firm to build seven new stadiums for the 2018 World Cup, the Vedomosti daily reports.
Russia has already selected 11 cities to host matches in the World Cup but several venues still need to be built from scratch in one of the most ambitious engineering projects in post-Soviet history.
Vedomosti said all the stadiums which need to be built or reconstructed with state financing will be constructed by a state firm attached to the sports ministry called Sport Engineering.
Citing a confirmed construction plan programme, it said that 104.4 billion rubles ($A3.5 billion) had been earmarked from the budget for the construction of the stadiums.
The company will build six stadiums from scratch in Volgograd, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Samara and Saransk. It will also rebuild the stadium in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
Each stadium will have a capacity of 45,000, it added.
Of the other stadiums, three are being built with financing from Russian regional governments and private investors - the Luzhniki and Spartak venues in Moscow and the Gazprom Arena in Saint Petersburg.
The stadium in the Volga city of Kazan, which this year hosted the Universiade world student games, is already operational.
Meanwhile, the stadium in Sochi will be ready for its hosting of the Winter Olympic Games in 2014.
Vedomosti said government sources emphasised that Sport Engineering would merely be carrying out a confirmed construction plan and would not become a mammoth conglomerate.
"The ministry of sport will be responsible for the construction and Sport Engineering is just the technical contractor, it's not right to say that the construction money will be channelled through it," a government source told the paper.
The complete absence of usable stadiums in half the Russian host cities has caused anxiety in some quarters although FIFA has expressed satisfaction with Russia's preparations so far.
There has also been concern about local issues such as the location of the stadium in Yekaterinburg, which is next door to the city's prison.
