"You have entrusted us with the Fifa World Cup for 2018 and I can promise you will never regret it, " said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.

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"All I can do is absolutely promise that these stories were just daft ideas that never - and would never have - got off the drawing board, " he wrote on his blog.

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It is a promise to create a world that nothing else can and where I become what I can never be.

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