President Putin congratulated those present on the launching of the station, Power Engineer’s Day and the 80th anniversary of the GOELRO Plan.
Mr Putin said that despite problems and arguments over the building of the power plant, the former mayor of St Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, had made the right decision to allocate a site for building the station, and the measures taken at the regional and federal level had made it possible to complete the project.
The President stressed that the final decision to go ahead with building the station was prompted in part by the fact that the contractors were the LMZ and Elektrosila businesses in Petersburg which had received modern equipment and technologies. The President thanked the partners from Germany and Finland who took part in the project.