A 15-year-old plan to flatten more than 1,500 of Moscow's five-story apartment blocks is edging toward the finishing line, with only about 250 of the doomed buildings still waiting for the wrecking ball to put them out of their misery, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, RIA Novosti reported Monday.
Sobyanin added that 116 of the city's Khrushchyovki — a common term for the apartment blocks, which were built in the late-1950s and early 1960s under the reign of then-leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev — will be flattened this year.
A further 130 will be wiped out next year, said Marat Khusnullin, one of Sobyanin's deputies.
In 1999, then-Mayor Yury Luzhkov ordered 1,722 of the relics, which were only supposed to last for 25 years, to be demolished by 2010, but the 2008 to 2009 economic crisis put the brakes on the city's plans.
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