Kyrgyzstan's
leader welcomed growing Russian investment in his impoverished
nation on Saturday in a ceremony to kick off the construction of
four Russian-built hydroelectric power stations
The power project extends the Kremlin’s footprint in the
volatile fringes of the former Soviet Union, following Russia’s
agreement to write off nearly $500 million in Kyrgyz debts.
Russian state-controlled hydroelectric power producer
RusHydro will build the four plants by 2016. The deal was agreed
in September after Kyrgyzstan extended a lease on a Russian
military base and confirmed plans to close a U.S. military base
used to fly troops in and out of Afghanistan.
“Today we witness a historic event in the upper reaches of
the Naryn River — for the first time since the fall of the
great Soviet Union, we lay the foundation not of just a single
hydropower plant, but of an entire cascade of stations,” Kyrgyz
President Almazbek Atambayev said at a ground-breaking ceremony.
“Great Russia supports us,” he said to the applause of
Kyrgyz officials, top RusHydro managers and local residents in
the mountain-rimmed Naryn River valley.
Twenty-one years after the demise of the Soviet Union,
Kyrgyzstan, a mainly Muslim Central Asian nation, remains one of
the poorest of the 15 former Soviet republics despite its
abundant hydropower potential and other natural resources.
The country, where two presidents have been toppled in
violent revolts since 2005 and per capita GDP is less than a
tenth of that in next-door Kazakhstan, badly needs foreign
investment to alleviate poverty that stokes instability.
The cascades of hydropower stations will have a combined
annual capacity of 1.055 million kilowatt-hours. Kyrgyz
officials say the construction of the first one will begin next
spring.
The plants will cost between $410 million and $425 million
and will be financed on a parity basis by Kyrgyzstan and
RusHydro, which would also manage 25 percent of the plants’
capacity until they turn profitable.
The project, initially conceived in the Soviet era, is
expected to be the first of several major energy projects set to
strengthen Russia’s hold in the strategic nation bordering China
and lying on a drug trafficking route out of Afghanistan.
“By 2016, all these four stations will have been built and
we will start building another eight plants (in this area),”
Atambayev said, but gave no details.
ATAMBAYEV LAYS FOUNDATIONS
In a sparsely populated valley some 400 km southeast of the
capital, Bishkek, Atambayev put a metal capsule with a message
to future generations into the foundations of the first
hydropower station. RusHydro Chairman Evgeny Dod took off his
wrist watch and cemented it with the capsule.
The Kyrgyz president, who enjoys warm relations with
President Vladimir Putin, clinched the deal during the Russian
leader’s visit to Bishkek last month.
“Today is a significant day in Kyrgyzstan’s ties with this
brotherly country (Russia),” said Atambayev. “I would like to
specially thank Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
for his support of this project, his political will and wisdom.”
With the deal, Russia also acquires the role of mediator in
Kyrgyzstan’s dispute with its much bigger neighbour Uzbekistan
over water use.
Uzbekistan, which lies downstream, depends on the rivers
that rise in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to irrigate farmland.
Uzbek leader Islam Karimov last month criticised plans by
its neighbours to revive other projects, conceived in Soviet
days but still unbuilt, to dam rivers and build hydropower
stations — the Kambarata-1 in Kyrgyzstan and the Rogun plant in
Tajikistan.
Karimov said the unresolved dispute over Central Asia’s
water resources risked provoking military conflict in the
region.
“I believe that when we display all the facts and documents
proving that the Kambarata-1 plant would primarily benefit the
downstream nations, this issue will be removed,” Atambayev said,
inviting Uzbekistan to eventually take part in the project.
