Rooppur in Bangladesh’s far west may seem an unlikely place for a Little Russia. Yet in this enclave, shop signs are written in Russian, Bengali vegetable vendors haggle over “kartoshka” (potatoes) and “morkov” (carrots), and Russian expats can have their teeth examined at Russ Dental Care.
The explanation sits a few kilometres down the road where Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear giant, is building the first nuclear power plant in Bangladesh. At an estimated cost of about $12bn, it is one of the largest ever infrastructure projects in the nation of about 170mn people.
With the aim of bringing the country’s share of electricity generated by nuclear power from zero to 10 per cent in less than 10 years, Rosatom is doing “amazing work”, says Sama Bilbao y León, director-general of the World Nuclear Association (WNA).