OREANDA-NEWS   The head of Dagestan, Fyodor Shchukin, announced his intention to initiate the issue of assigning Makhachkala the status of a million-plus city. He wrote in the Maks messenger that the authorities are currently working to determine the actual population in order to bring the settlement closer to this step.

"According to the data at the beginning of the year, the population of the capital [Dagestan] is about 770 thousand people, but in fact more than 1.1 million citizens live in the city," Shchukin said.

According to him, the millionaire status will allow Makhachkala to gain access to additional federal programs and financing, as well as strengthen the image of the settlement and its position in the North—South transport corridor (from Russia to the Persian Gulf and South Asia).

A million-strong city is a city with a population of more than a million people, as well as, most often, an economic, industrial and cultural center that provides basic needs for the region. Currently, 16 localities in Russia are endowed with this status: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Krasnodar, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Omsk, Voronezh, Perm and Volgograd.