"This project has been in the pipeline for seven years now. We would very much like this to happen [...]," he said in an interview to the IQ magazine.
Ilves said he believed that Visaginas plant could still be built, because "the alternatives are worse."
The Estonian president underlined the importance of energy independence, given that the Russian Foreign Ministry itself "has made it clear that energy is a foreign policy tool."
The Lithuanian government expects to decide this spring whether or not to go ahead with the project to build a new nuclear power plant in Visaginas, in the eastern part of the country. The original plan was for the facility to be built by Baltic energy companies and Japan's Hitachi.
