Did Russia geoengineer good weather for the World Cup?

Since the beginning of the World Cup, Russia has been blessed with exceptionally good weather, with temperatures in Moscow well above the seasonal average (actually the hottest in 30 years). Russia’s neighbors on the other hand have endured three weeks of unusually cold weather, endless rains and flooding.
Under the circumstances it was just a matter of time until someone made a connection between these unusual weather patterns.

Lovely weather in the Red Square

The idea that Russia has made sure the weather is no issue for its World Cup has been put forth in Romania by two people that don’t exactly fit the conspiracy theory nutcase profile - Ioan Mircea Pascu, a former defense minister, and Dumitru Prunariu, the only Romanian astronaut, who was trained in the former USSR, in the 1980s. Interesting enough, it was during that time that the former USSR built its Sura Ionospheric Heating Facility (SURA), the Soviet version of the much more famous American HAARP program.

The SURA facility in Russia

According to Wikipedia, SURA is located near the small town of Vasilsursk about 100 km east of Nizhniy Novgorod, and is quite similar to the HAARP facility in Alaska.
The theory that went viral in my country also mentions a precedent, during the 1980 Olympics, when the a few hours before the opening ceremony the skies were clouded. Miraculously, half an hour before the ceremony began the clouds parted, providing more then adequate weather. This is not spectacular by any means, seeing that the US were able to engineer torrential rains over Vietnam during the War.
The technology needed to influence weather over such a large country as Russia would necessarily be different than simply seeding some clouds in a specific region. Fact is that for the past three weeks, Russia has been under the influence of a high-pressure atmospheric front, whereas countries like Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece struggle with low atmosphere, which brought us all plenty of rains and thunderstorms.
It is not the first time, Russia has been accused of geoengineering. In 2002, some said the floods over much of Western Europe were caused by Russia.
It is easy to see why the Russians would be eager to have fair weather during the football championship,it’s a matter of impressing the tens of thousands of tourists and, also, about financial gains. Such an event won’t be happening in Russia again anytime soon, but Moscow’s having such a technology would come in handy in winter. As we all know, much of Western Europe is dependent upon Russian gas - the harsher the winter, the more gas would be needed, at any price. Interesting, don’t you think?
In the meantime, I’m anxious for the World Cup to end as it’s too cold to go to the pool and we had to postpone a short vacation in a mountain resort on account of the severe weather.

Waiting for the storm in downtown Bucharest

On a side-note - If you’re interested to read more about SURA, you’re out of luck - most of the links on Wikipedia are long-dead.

Thanks for reading