It's a bit of a stretch, isn't it? :) In addition to the safety concerns, you are absolutely right that it was also a Russian geopolitical project, though, just

It's a bit of a stretch, isn't it? :) In addition to the safety concerns, you are absolutely right that it was also a Russian geopolitical project, though, just with more realistic and with more practical objectives. One of the objectives was an attempt to make the Baltic States dependant on the Russian (well, Belarusian, but due to political realities it doesn't quite matter) energy supplies by flooding them with cheap electricity and discouraging them from diversification. Such dependency would give some means to make political influence to the Baltics. This was in addition to another objective of making Belarus even more economically reliant on Russia (in this case, very cheap but large loans given to build the power plant). However, I don't think they managed to gain anything in the Baltics, because of a robust strategic response from the Baltic States: 1) they diversified their electricity supply with more links to Scandinavia and Poland (see NordBalt, EstLink and LitPol projects) 2) created an open and well functioning electricity market (see Nord Pool) 3) eventually decided to boycott the electricity from the Belarus Power Plant, undermining its economic basis. Russia succeeded in tightening the economic grip on Belarus, but in terms of economic dependency, things are already pretty grim there..