Bulgaria will have to pay $1bn in forfeiture to the Russian state corporation Rosatom for withdrawing from the Belene nuclear power plant project. In a few years, the country will also have to import electricity, experts say. They believe that Bulgaria refused to cooperate with Russia on the project under tough pressure from the United States. Notably, the country’s former energy minister Rumen Ovcharov told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the fate of Belene had been decided by the Americans, not the prime minister. U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria James Warlick said it was a joint decision. After many years of consideration, it was decided that the project was too costly for Bulgaria, he said, adding that cooperation between Sofia and Gazprom could be “diversified” under the same scheme.