Last week, Ukrainian lawmakers told POLITICO that the government had to admit that it did not have enough support in parliament to pass a bill to buy the reactors.
According to Andriy Shupanyn, a deputy of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, such defeats are “extremely rare.”
MEPs questioned whether the idle reactors Bulgaria bought more than a decade ago could be restarted quickly and whether the funds could be better spent on renewables and other sources of electricity. The costs, they said, would likely spiral out of control and open the door to corruption.
However, Galushchenko promised to convince the skeptics and get the project off the ground.
“We continue to work with Parliament to pass this law because it is a very important project for us,” he said. “I am confident that Parliament will pass the law.”
There is no indication that Russia will receive any revenue from the sale of the two reactors. Bulgaria put the sale on hold after plans to start them up fell through. Sofia has since signed a plan to expand its Kozloduy nuclear power plant with US nuclear energy giant Westinghouse.
Ukraine Important energy infrastructure such as geothermal power plants and grid transformers have been subjected to sustained attacks by Russian missiles and drones in recent months. Significant electricity imports from the EU are required to resolve the new bottleneck.
“We are, of course, trying to repair any equipment that can be repaired to provide additional energy to the system,” Galushchenko said. However, he warned that Ukraine is now “actually on the eve of probably the harshest winter in the country’s history.”
