Nasta Zakharevich: Despite Chernobyl, Belarus' Nuclear Dependence on Russia Is Rising

Although the Chernobyl plant was located in Ukraine, Belarus suffered the most from the disaster. Due to wind patterns in the first ten days after that catastrophic night, 70 percent of the radioactive fallout landed on Belarusian territory - contaminating nearly a quarter of the country. The consequences were devastating: in the following decade, the incidence of thyroid cancer increased more than sevenfold. Over 137,000 people in Belarus were evacuated, and more than 110,000 Belarusians became liquidators, involved in managing the aftermath of the disaster.

The first sign of the state’s desire to consign Chernobyl to oblivion came in 1995, when benefits for liquidators were cut - less than ten years after one of the largest technological catastrophes in human history. But Belarusian society was not prepared to forget. Even under Soviet rule, shaken by the concealment of the true scale of the disaster, civil society organized the first-ever “Chernobyl Way” march in 1988. Around 30,000 people took part, and the march later became an annual event.

The “Chernobyl Way” is often described as a catalyst for the national revival of the early 1990s. Later, as the authorities under Alyaksandr Lukashenka grew increasingly authoritarian, people continued to join the traditional march to signal that they refused to forget Chernobyl.

Meanwhile, the authorities systematically technocratized and depoliticized the issue. In official rhetoric, there was less and less space for discussions about the right to a healthy environment, access to information, and accountability. Instead, greater emphasis was placed on technical aspects: the Chernobyl disaster was framed as the result of specific technical errors that would not be repeated - therefore, there was supposedly no need to continue discussing it.

In recent years, state media have adhered to a general narrative of “overcoming the catastrophe.” They quite literally echo Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who as early as 2006, during a meeting with UN Deputy Secretary-General Helen Clark, stated: “Let this be our contribution to the development of humanity. You must know: if, God forbid, disaster strikes somewhere, our scientists and specialists are ready to work on overcoming its consequences.”

A generational gap in the perception of the disaster has also proven inevitable: while for the older generation the catastrophe became part of lived experience, for today’s youth it is merely a historical fact - an image shaped by school curricula, a popular TV series, and short videos on social media. The overall media environment in Belarus creates among younger audiences the impression that nuclear energy is not a controversial issue in general, nor a deeply traumatic one for Belarus in particular.

The generational divide also explains why the voices most concerned about the emergence of a nuclear power plant in Belarus itself largely belong to the older generation. Aliaksandr Lukashenka, who likewise belongs to the cohort for whom Chernobyl is part of lived experience, nevertheless prioritizes maintaining close ties with Russia. In this context, Belarus took out a 10 billion US dollar loan from Russia to finance the construction of the nuclear power plant — often viewed as deepening the country’s dependence on its larger neighbor.

Yauhen Makarchuk, an analyst at iSANS, disagrees with this assessment. He argues that the Astravets Nuclear Power Plant has indeed reduced dependence on Russia, “but not to the extent that is often claimed.” Dependence, he explains, should be measured by the share of supplies coming from a single source: “Previously, we relied solely on natural gas from Russia, which created strong dependence, because any problems with extraction or delivery posed a serious threat to Belarus. Now a significant portion of electricity is generated by the nuclear power plant, which means that even without gas we would still have a second source of energy.”

He also notes that gas must be supplied continuously, whereas nuclear fuel is loaded once a year, meaning that a supply disruption would not immediately halt production. However, dependence on Russia persists, as nuclear fuel is still imported from there.

Belarusian authorities also claim that the domestic plant reduces reliance on Russia. After the launch of the first power unit, Ihar Jushkou, a leading analyst at the National Energy Security Fund, stated that the station would diversify the country’s energy mix. “This will lead Belarus to reduce gas purchases. Each power unit of the NPP will allow savings of about three billion cubic meters per year.”

Yet even before the plant became operational, experts warned that it would not bring financial relief to end consumers. In 2018, Deputy Prime Minister Uladzimir Siamashka stated that while the cost of electricity production would decrease, tariffs for households would continue to rise. An independent assessment by the organization Ecohome projected that electricity prices for households would increase by 1.5 to 2 times. Prices have indeed continued to rise: between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2025, the average electricity price increased by 13.3 percent.

In 2024, Belarus’s Energy Ministry acknowledged that in order to use all the electricity generated by two (not even three!) nuclear units, annual demand would have to rise by 18.5 billion kWh. In reality, consumption has grown by only 6 billion kWh over the past five years. For the two units to be economically viable, Belarus would need to use in a single year as much electricity as the plant has generated over five years.

The Astravets plant was built less than 25 kilometers from the Lithuanian border, causing serious concern in Lithuania. It refused to purchase electricity from Belarus, and it has become a source of tension between the two countries. Lithuania’s objections were supported by the parties to the Espoo Convention, which concluded that the construction of the Astravets plant did not comply with the Convention’s requirements.

Public oversight in Belarus is extremely limited, due to a combination of factors - from the authorities’ lack of understanding of the need for public participation to the mass repression that followed 2020, when around 500,000 people were forced to leave the country and thousands were imprisoned on politically motivated charges.

Under these conditions, after mass repression had already begun, the second unit of the Astravets Nuclear Power Plant was launched in 2023, and plans for a third unit were announced in 2025. Energy Minister Denis Moroz said the third unit is expected to start operating between 2035 and 2038. Lithuanian presidential adviser Deividas Matulionis warned that this would create an even bigger problem: “We were never happy about the first and second reactors. In fact, the threat has grown. A third unit will be an even more serious problem for us.”

According to Bloomberg, even before the second unit was launched, a serious issue was discovered in February 2022: resin got into the system and could have damaged key reactor components. The launch was delayed. This only became public in December 2025 after Rosatom documents were leaked. This story once again brings us back to the issue of transparency in decision-making and processes.

In 2022, it became clear that no page had truly been turned and that a disaster like Chernobyl could happen again. Russian occupying forces seized the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and held 210 staff members there. On the day of the takeover, gamma radiation levels at monitoring stations rose twentyfold. Thus, the nuclear issue returned to public attention in an entirely new form: the very fact of the militarization of a nuclear facility revived old fears of catastrophic scenarios that, for a time, had seemed unlikely to many.

A week after the start of the full-scale invasion, the Russian army also seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — the largest nuclear power station in Europe. There were repeated reports that Russian forces shelled power lines in order to disconnect the plant from Ukraine’s electricity grid.

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has fundamentally altered perceptions of nuclear risks in the region. In addition to the threats associated with the seizure and damage of critical infrastructure, nuclear blackmail has become a reality. Nuclear safety is no longer solely a technical matter— it now lies within the realm of international politics and military confrontation. “The idea that any country could fight and win a nuclear war is an illusion,” the UN Secretary-General said at the outset of the large-scale war. “Any use of nuclear weapons would lead to humanitarian Armageddon.”

Eastern European countries have become particularly vulnerable in the current crisis. Any incident at the Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia plants could have serious cross-border consequences - environmental, humanitarian, and economic. It is increasingly clear that technically sound facilities alone are no longer sufficient to manage these threats. Nuclear plants are now affected by the dynamics of the military and political situation, requiring new, more comprehensive approaches to understanding and managing risks.

Belarus’s energy, political, and economic dependence on Russia is leading the country into ever new traps. There can be no equal coexistence within the so-called Union State with a country that has launched a full-scale war of aggression and whose actions have, in some cases, been recognized as acts of genocide. Deepening dependence naturally results in growing complicity in the war. If at the beginning of the full-scale invasion Belarus provided its territory for Russian attacks, it is now offering its territory for the deployment of nuclear weapons.

The NATO Secretary General first stated in 2023 that he saw indications of Russian preparations to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus. A year later, Aliaksandr Lukashenka claimed that such weapons were already present in the country, although Western intelligence services noted that they had no real evidence to confirm this.

On December 30, 2025, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the “Oreshnik” missile system had officially been deployed in Belarus. A video was presented as proof, but the location of the deployment remained undisclosed. At the same time, the organization of former security officials BelPol expressed doubts that Oreshnik had actually “entered combat duty.” Their arguments echoed earlier assessments by various intelligence services: there was no information about the infrastructure preparation, and such equipment could hardly have been transferred to Belarus unnoticed. As for the video, the former officers pointed out that the launcher itself was not shown.

However, NATO treats the reports of its deployment as credible, this is standard security protocol. As a result, Belarus becomes even more marginalized in the eyes of the Western international community and is perceived primarily as an accomplice rather than a victim of Russian expansion.

“One has to understand — and people themselves understand — that if nuclear missiles are stationed on your territory, the opponent’s nuclear missiles will also be aimed at you,” says Dzmitry Kuchuk, environmental adviser to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and former leader of the Belarusian Green Party. “Why Belarusian officials and propagandists fail to grasp this is hard to say.”

The future of Belarusian energy policy is inevitably linked to diversification. The current reality demonstrates that reliance on a single type of electricity generation increases both technological and political vulnerability for any country. For Belarus, this is particularly acute in the context of its present-day dependence on Russia and the political isolation that accompanies it.

Yauhen Makarchuk argues that energy dependence should be considered critical. All energy supplies come to Belarus from a single country, and at prices significantly below global market levels. A disruption of supplies or a shift to world market prices under such conditions would lead either to severe economic shocks or to supply interruptions. “Technically, energy could be sourced from other markets, but this would require active efforts to organize such deliveries, and under the current foreign policy circumstances this is hard to imagine. Moreover, this would automatically mean a transition to global prices,” the expert adds. He concludes that energy dependence can be used as a tool of pressure, forcing a country to make decisions that do not correspond to its national interests.

The current configuration also directly hinders the implementation of the European Green Deal in Belarus and thus becomes yet another factor distancing the country from European integration. “Beyond civil society experts, few people think about Belarus in the context of the green transition,” says Irina Sukhiy, a representative of the Green Alliance. “Much depends on us — not only the promotion of sustainable development as a topic, but also shaping the very perception that Belarus is part of the European family, where alignment with common environmental and energy standards matters.”

She emphasizes that the expert community must develop strategies and scenarios for Belarus’s green transformation — steps that would make the country more independent, modern, and environmentally responsible. Sukhiy points to the need for in-depth analysis, roadmaps, and concrete proposals on energy transition and climate policy, noting that the Green Alliance has already presented its own vision of how Belarus could synchronize with the European Green Deal.

“It is crucial that the idea of transitioning to an environmentally sustainable model of development becomes understandable and attractive to citizens and future policymakers alike, because this is how demand for change is formed. Without public understanding and bottom-up demand, as well as clear professional proposals, the green transition risks remaining either a slogan or a project detached from people,” the expert concludes.

It is important to understand that Belarus has significant renewable energy potential from the outset: biomass, wind, solar, and hydropower could cover a large share of the country’s energy needs. However, the development of renewables has been slowed by dependence on gas and the focus on the nuclear power plant.

“There were progressive steps,” recalls Irina Sukhiy, pointing to the 2010 Law on Renewable Energy, as well as quotas and incentives. “This helped increase the share of renewables in the energy mix from minimal levels to 8.1 percent by 2020.”

In 2018, the organization Ecohome initiated the development of an Energy Revolution scenario. Experts from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) showed that Belarus could have transitioned to 92 percent renewable energy by 2050 — if there had been political will. “But after the decision to build the nuclear power plant, growth rates dropped sharply: renewable energy development was practically frozen, new quotas were no longer allocated, and strict restrictions were introduced in 2019,” the expert adds. Today, the share of renewables has stagnated at 8 - 9 percent. As a result, the country’s potential remains untapped, and the energy sector depends on administrative decisions and fuel imports.