With the Baltic market effectively closed and domestic demand limited, Minsk has looked east for energy distribution as prospects have looked less likely with NATO aligned nations. Belarusian officials have floated building another nuclear plant and have suggested its output could be routed into Russia’s Unified Energy System and onward to the “new regions” Moscow claims to have annexed in Ukraine. That’s a political term for areas under Russian occupation, from parts of Donetsk and Luhansk to occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Belarus presents the plan as economic and practical—locking in a buyer for steady baseload power, deepening industrial cooperation with Russia, and showcasing low-carbon energy at a time of volatile gas prices.

Belarus’s first nuclear plant at Astravets, built by Russia’s state nuclear firm Rosatom, brought its first reactor into commercial operation in 2021 and the second in 2023. The twin VVER‑1200 units sit about 50 kilometers from Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, and have been controversial from the outset. Lithuania banned electricity imports from Belarus on safety grounds and pushed the Baltic states to accelerate their break with the old Soviet-era BRELL grid that still links them to Belarus and Russia.

How the electricity would actually move

Since early 2022, Ukraine’s grid has been synchronized with continental Europe, not with Belarus and Russia. That means Belarus cannot sell power directly into Ukraine. But Moscow has integrated occupied Ukrainian areas into its own grid, building new lines from Russia and trying to rewire the Zaporizhzhia region around the seized nuclear plant there. In practice, any Belarusian electricity would flow into Russia first and then be wheeled south, the way power has long been reallocated within Russia’s vast network.

For people living in occupied areas, the attraction is obvious: stable power means heat in winter, working hospitals, and fewer blackouts after repeated strikes on Ukraine’s energy system. For Kyiv, though, outside electricity sent to occupied territory is part of a broader pattern of entrenchment—new phone codes, Russian curricula in schools, rouble salaries, and now power that ties communities to Moscow rather than to Ukraine’s European-facing grid. It complicates postwar reintegration and raises questions about who pays and who controls critical infrastructure in places that may remain contested for years.

A safety debate that crosses borders

Astravets has been a sore point with Lithuania since the first concrete was poured. Vilnius argues the site is too close to its capital and says the plant came online with an incomplete safety culture; it stockpiled iodine tablets, ran evacuation drills, and lobbied the European Union to keep Belarusian power out of regional markets. Belarus counters that the plant meets International Atomic Energy Agency standards and has undergone multiple peer reviews, and it points out that many EU states run similar Russian-designed reactors. Commissioning hiccups—automatic shutdowns during testing—fed public anxiety early on, even as Belarusian regulators and Rosatom described them as routine.

A second Belarusian plant would likely follow the same model: Russian financing, Russian technology, and Russian fuel. That deepens Belarus’s dependence on Moscow for decades, from construction and servicing to spent-fuel management. It also heightens political risk for neighbors, who worry less about reactor design than about crisis management if something goes wrong and about Moscow’s growing ability to use regional power flows for leverage.

Economics and the changing map of Europe’s grids

Belarus’s original Astravets project relied on a multibillion-dollar state loan from Russia, with repayment terms already adjusted as economic pressures mounted. A new plant would add more debt unless Moscow subsidizes it to secure long-term electricity for its own consumers. From Minsk’s perspective, exporting nuclear baseload at predictable prices is a hedge against the loss of Western markets and an answer to rising domestic gas costs. From Russia’s viewpoint, tapping Belarusian output for occupied Ukrainian regions can free up capacity elsewhere and support reconstruction promises without straining its own grid in wartime.

Meanwhile, the Baltic states plan to complete their synchronization with Europe’s grid in 2025, severing real-time operations with Russia and Belarus. That shift will shrink Belarus’s western export options to almost zero and push it even further into Russia’s energy orbit. In short, the war is accelerating a quiet but consequential rewiring of Eastern Europe, where grid maps now track political alignments as closely as engineering needs.

What to watch next

The key signs to monitor are concrete rather than rhetorical: formal agreements between Minsk and Moscow on new nuclear capacity, financing terms with Rosatom, and technical plans to route additional power south through Russia. On the safety side, any fresh International Atomic Energy Agency missions to Astravets—or to a second site—will matter for public trust. In Ukraine, the state of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and the pace of Russian repairs to transmission lines into occupied areas will shape demand. And in the Baltics, the final timetable for grid separation will tell neighbors how insulated they really are from Belarusian power politics.

For people on the ground, the stakes are straightforward. In occupied Ukrainian cities, a steadier electricity supply can make daily life more bearable, even as it underscores a political reality many don’t accept. In Lithuania, another Belarusian reactor would revive fears about emergency preparedness in a worst-case scenario. And for Belarusians, an expanded nuclear program promises cheap power and jobs—but also ties their economy even tighter to Russia at a time when alternatives are narrowing.