Vladimir Zhidkikh, Chairman of Youth and Tourism Committee of Federation Council

– Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian nuclear power engineers enjoy very high level of mutual confidence

In the last days many foreign mass media have actively discussed Russia’s long-term strategic relations in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy, particularly, with Ukraine and Bulgaria.

We in Russia must take a philosophical approach to such discussions. Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian nuclear power engineers enjoy a very high level of mutual confidence. An old Indian tradition stipulated exchange of children between tribes wanting to live in peace. Something like that is presently going on in Moscow region: in the framework of Nuclear Kids 2009 festival, a group of children of Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian nuclear workers are staging a musical about nuclear energy so as to show it in Moscow and Kyiv.
  
They in the camp refuse to discuss politics. The producer of the NucKids project Nikolay Stepanov says that children are far from politics. They are fantastically talented and sincere and all media battles are just a vanity of vanities as compared with this firework of emotions.

TVEL Corporation also has a similar project. For many years already, jointly with its Ukrainian partner, NNEGC Energoatom, this company has organized summer holidays for Russian children in Ukraine and Ukrainian kids in Russia. This is a very important social project. Presently, a group of children of workers of Ukrainian nuclear power plants are spending their holidays at Kolosok recreation camp, while several children of TVEL employees are having rest at Laspi camp in the Crimea.