Belene nuclear plant: Bulgarian far-right leader threatens to send opponents to a labour camp

Kostadin Kostadinov, leader of the pro-Russian far-right party ‘Vazrazhdane’ (Revival), started his first term as an MP by threatening to deport all those who oppose the Belene nuclear power plant to the town’s communist-era forced labour camp.

The Belene NPP is an unfinished project that dates back to the 1980s. Bulgaria has invested €600 million in it.

“They will have a large selection of jobs – the tunnel under Shipka, the tunnel under Petrohan, uranium mines, etc. Those of them who will be in Belene will not be walking far – they will be able to be directly involved in the completion of the Belene NPP”, Kostadinov said.

‘Vazrazhdane’ won just under 5% in the parliamentary elections due to its consistent policy of disparaging the pandemic, resistance to COVID vaccines and green certificates. Now the party is beginning to expand on the energy issue. Vazrazhdane has 13 out of 240 MPs in the new parliament.

“I just watched on one of the national televisions how Martin Dimitrov, an MP from Democratic Bulgaria, explained how pointless it was to complete the Belene NPP. To say such things to the Bulgarian people at a time when the price of electricity for industrial consumers has jumped many times, and household consumers are trembling with fear in anticipation of the increase for them, is a manifestation of either a supreme form of national betrayal or a serious case of brain damage “, said Kostadinov one of his two Facebook profiles.

Belene NPP is the last remaining project of the so-called Russian Grand Slam in Bulgaria, which was agreed between the Presidents of Bulgaria and Russia Georgi Parvanov and Vladimir Putin. The others were the South Stream gas pipeline and the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline.

(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)