Speaking with the builders, the Prime Minister gave a high assessment of the quality of their work. “I hope everything will turn out well,” he said, and promised that the road network around the bridge would be improved.

The project’s designers drew Putin’s attention to the fact that construction had begun in the Soviet era, and the project did not take into account Kaliningrad’s present-day reality. “It is necessary to fit the bridge into the city’s transport infrastructure, to broaden adjacent streets, otherwise a bottleneck will form near the bridge,” the builders said. Experts estimate that this would require another 800 million roubles, which cannot be provided from the regional or city budget. Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Nikolai Tsukanov said he hoped the federal centre would help in resolving the issue.

Putin was also told that, according to independent experts, economic losses incurred as a result of traffic jams in the city amount to 10 billion roubles per year. The bridge's construction will reduce them significantly, since it will cut down on the time required to travel from one end of the city to another from 30 minutes to 4 or 5 minutes.

The prime minister was also told about the development of the road network in the Kaliningrad Region, for which the regional budget had already allocated 5.1 billion roubles in 2011. Notably, Putin was shown the construction plans for a ring route near the Primorskaya recreation area, and for reconstruction of the northern and southern bypasses of Kaliningrad.

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The prime minister also learned about the progress in the implementation of a project to create a multi-purpose sports centre on Oktyabrsky island in the region. The centre is being built for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and will include a stadium with a capacity of 45,000 seats. The territory around the stadium will be turned into a miniature Venice, with canals and parks. The estimated sum of private investment in the territory’s development is 3.5-4 billion euros. The construction of the recreation area, with a shopping centre, exhibition areas, sports facilities and an amusement park, will take seven or eight years. The governor admitted that when the bridge was being designed, it was not known that Russia would be hosting the World Cup. As a result, the project does not provide for additional junctions. “But this is not a problem technically,” he said.

Tsukanov also told Putin that Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy, supported the idea for his agency to become the sponsor of Kaliningrad’s football club, Baltika. “This would be the best form of advertising for the construction of a nuclear power plant in the region,” the governor said. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, who accompanied Putin on the trip, said that the team had “a lot of fans, that it is very popular and needs to be supported.” In reply, Putin said that he didn’t have any objections.

Elaborating on the sports discussion, the prime minister suggested building three children’s recreation camps, including in Kaliningrad, in addition to the already existing ones on the Black Sea coast (Orlyonok) and in the Far East (Volna). Such camps will also be opened on Lake Baikal and in the Volga area, he said. “This way, we will create a network of children’s recreation camps all over the country.” Zhukov said that the government would draft the necessary proposals.