TALLINN, Estonia — Belarus unveiled a proposal on Friday to build a second nuclear power plant capable of supplying energy to Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.
President Alexander Lukashenko raised the plans during a meeting at the Kremlin with President Vladimir Putin, who appeared to publicly support the idea.
Lukashenko said the plant could be used if needed to supply regions controlled by Russia in Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk.
Belarus opened its first nuclear power plant, the Astravets Nuclear Power Plant in November 2020. It was built by the Russian state atomic energy corporation, Rosatom, with a $10 billion loan provided by Moscow.
Putin did not specify at Friday’s meeting whether Russia would provide financial backing for a second plant.
Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus for over three decades, is a close ally of the Kremlin. He allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory as a staging ground for Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and later authorized the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear missiles.
