Belarusian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that a second nuclear power plant could be built in eastern Belarus and, if necessary, provide energy to the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, which Lukashenko described as “liberated.”
“If there is a decision, we will immediately start building a new plant if there is a need in western Russia and in the liberated regions,” Lukashenko said, addressing Putin during a meeting in the Kremlin. He was quoted by the state-run Belarusian agency Belta.
He said Rosatom has already worked out options for further expansion of Belarus’ nuclear power industry. But Lukashenko refused to name the amount of financial resources needed.
“The question of financing does not arise at all. If there is a consumer who will take electricity and pay the necessary tariff, it’s not a problem at all,” Putin replied to Lukashenko.
On 25 September at the Global Atomic Energy Forum in Moscow, Lukashenko offered Belarus’ services in building a nuclear power plant to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, with whom they were in contact for the first time since relations deteriorated over Lukashenko’s support for Azerbaijan in the Karabakh conflict.
The first nuclear power plant in Belarus, the Belarus Nuclear Power Plant, was officially opened in 2020. The power plant was built according to a Russian design and on a Russian loan from 2011 in Grodno region, 22 kilometres from the Lithuanian border.
The construction of the power plant has been strongly criticised by environmental activists, with much of the country contaminated with radioactive emissions after the Chernobyl disaster. The construction was also opposed by Lithuania; the power plant is located about 50 kilometres from the country’s capital Vilnius.