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23-01-2014

MOSCOW'S QUEST: "RECONQUERING" THE LOST EUROPE

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Moscow is going to finance about the 80% of the costs[1] of the construction of two new nuclear reactors (out of a total of four old reactors) in the Hungarian Paks nuclear power plant (town close to Budapest). This is the gist of the agreement that Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban signed last week, concluding a negotiation that the two countries had started in 2009. According to such agreement, Moscow is going to lend up 13,7 billion dollars[2] (about 10 billion euros) which will be used by MVM Group (state company owner of the facility) in order to increase the power plant productivity, power plant that now provides about 40% of the national needs.

This is both an economic and political move. Sure, Russia assured herself a high economic return from her investments, but the “political” return is not less important: signing this agreement Moscow wanted to demonstrate that Russia is still able to exert her influence on the former Warsaw Pact members that are now either members of the European Union (as Hungary is) or in her political and economic orbit. It's an indirect, subtle and almost invisible kind of influence, but powerful indeed.

Some of the latest Russian political battles or decisions (from the quarrel against the European Union to win Ukrainian “political loyalty”, to the Iskander missiles deployed in Kaliningrad, to the Paks power plant renovation) are driven by the desire of reconquering the same influence that Moscow used to have in the Eastern Europe, as to remind that Brussels is not the only power centre in Europe.



[1]Source: euronews.com.

[2]Source: themoscowtimes.com.

 

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Alessandro Mazzilli

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