Beyond oil and gasoline: Russia’s nuclear leverage defined | EUROtoday

In the wake of Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, the West has moved to chop off Moscow’s oil and gasoline revenues — from US President Donald Trump hitting India with tariffs for getting Russian oil to the European Union vowing to part out Russian gasoline imports “once and for all” by November 2027.

But one Russian vitality sector has prevented main sanctions: nuclear energy.

“Nuclear is not nearly as big as the oil and gas business, so it hasn’t received as much attention so far,” stated Sebastian Stier, writer of the Russia Nuclear Interdependencies chapter within the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2025.

DW has analyzed information and spoken to specialists to hint the present scope of Russia’s affect within the nuclear vitality sector past the nation’s personal borders.

Russia has been steadily increasing its world nuclear footprint via its state-owned nuclear company Rosatom and its subsidiaries.

It not solely gives financing or technological assist, it additionally exports full nuclear-power-plant options — from constructing infrastructure to supplying the core part, the Nuclear Steam Supply System, which drives energy technology.

“Russia has a strong interest in keeping this business going because it generates substantial revenue,” Stier instructed DW.

Rosatom’s 2024 Performance report states that “revenue from overseas projects increased by 10% year on year to $18 billion (€15.5 billion).”

That determine is dwarfed by the quantity Russia generated from oil and gasoline. In 2024, regardless of sanctions, the nation exported greater than six occasions value of that in oil and gasoline.

Though financially modest relative to grease and gasoline exports, the position of Russia’s nuclear sector can’t be judged solely on income.

While Finland canceled a contract with Rosatom shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, elsewhere, Russian-backed nuclear tasks proceed, such because the Rooppur plant in Bangladesh, El Dabaa in Egypt and Balkhash in Kazakhstan.

Construction has continued even contained in the EU, at Hungary’s Paks II plant in addition to in a NATO member state, Turkey’s Akkuyu facility.

“That’s the result of a long-term strategy to establish a strong foothold in these markets,” Stier stated.

Russia is bringing extra nuclear vitality into the Global South

Russia is actively pushing nuclear vitality, even concentrating on nations with restricted electrical energy demand, in response to Hartmut Winkler, a professor of Physics on the University of Johannesburg and a contributing writer within the World Nuclear Industry Status Report since 2023.

In Africa, Rosatom signed a nuclear cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with Niger’s military-led authorities in July 2025. Similar offers have been signed with Burkina Faso and Mali.

These agreements are largely strategic, in response to Winkler.

“Russia has set up these cooperation agreements with the aim of someday building a nuclear power plant. But they’re still very far down the line,” he stated.

Forging new uranium provide chains with Russia as a substitute of Western nations

Beyond constructing nuclear energy vegetation, Russia seems to have a powerful curiosity in Africa’s uranium — an important useful resource that, as soon as enriched, powers nuclear reactors.

In July 2025, as an illustration, Russia introduced its intention to mine uranium in Niger, which exported all of its uranium to France in 2022 and 2023. “Our task is not just to participate in uranium mining, we must create an entire system for developing peaceful nuclear energy in Niger,” stated Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev throughout a go to to Niamey.

These developments come as Sahel nations like Niger seem to reassess their relationships with former colonial energy France and different Western nations, whereas exploring deeper vitality ties with Russia.

One instance: Niger’s Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine accused France of “plundering” its assets on the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. “Uranium has brought nothing but misery, pollution, rebellion, corruption and desolation to the people of Niger, and prosperity and power to the French,” he stated.

Mark Hibbs, nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program, who makes a speciality of nuclear coverage, stated Russia markets itself as distinct from Western nations.

“The Russians will be honest traders … They will not try to force a political narrative on countries that are interested in their economic and technological development,” he stated.

In September 2025, President Vladimir Putin bolstered this message in the course of the World Atomic Week, expressing assist for the nuclear ambitions of “countries in the Global South and East” and rejecting the notion of “technological colonialism.”

Hibbs defined that the previous Soviet Union constructed a reservoir of experience that Russia continues to leverage.

“The Russian government, which reconstructed itself after the fall of the Soviet Union, understood that this was an asset that Russia could use to move itself forward,” he stated.

Nuclear vitality cooperations find yourself going past vitality provide itself

Buying nuclear amenities from Russia includes signing up for a long-term package deal of assist and reliance that may final “at least four to six decades,” in response to Chia-Yun Po, a authorized scholar specializing in arms management, nuclear nonproliferation and worldwide legislation and an affiliate at Yale Law School. “Through this nuclear diplomacy, by engaging with foreign hosts, Russia would be maintaining a very long-term relationship with other governments.”

Winkler argues that Russia’s enlargement into these nuclear markets has influenced how different nations reply diplomatically to Moscow’s international coverage strikes. “[In] countries where Russia is building a nuclear plant, it does give them a lot of leeway over such a country’s foreign policy, because effectively, that means Russia holds a key to the electricity supply in that country.”

He pointed to how these nations voted on the United Nations following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: “They always tend to either abstain or certainly not take a position hostile to Russia.”

In March 2022, for instance, China and Bangladesh abstained from a UN General Assembly decision demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukraine. In April, Egypt joined Bangladesh in abstaining from a vote to droop Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, whereas China voted in opposition to the suspension.

However, abstentions and votes in favor don’t essentially replicate implicit assist for Russia or full assist for Ukraine. Hungary voted to sentence Russia. But Prime Minister Viktor Orban vocally opposes EU sanctions in opposition to Moscow. In January 2023, for instance, he stated in an interview with Hungarian state radio that Hungary would block any EU sanctions on Russia that concentrate on the nuclear sector.

Russia’s use of nuclear cooperation as a diplomatic instrument additionally extends to main powers, together with the United States. In the 2000s and early 2010s, the US and Russia struck a number of post-Cold War nuclear agreements, most notably the 2010 New START treaty signed by then-US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, which capped deployed strategic arsenals.

But the connection has since unraveled. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, nuclear agreements have been suspended, deserted or allowed to lapse.

Russia’s grip on enriched uranium

Russia’s nuclear attain is not solely mirrored within the variety of nations it has nuclear agreements with. Moscow additionally gives a crucial a part of the nuclear vitality chain: enriched uranium, the gasoline that powers reactors.

Between 2013 and 2023, Moscow exported $20.5 billion of enriched uranium. The United Kingdom and the Netherlands got here in a distant second and third, with $10.6 billion and 9.5 billion, respectively.

This dominance provides Russia appreciable leverage as a result of securing nuclear gasoline is a multi-step course of. Any nuclear vitality firm has to “purchase uranium in some nations on this planet, then they should discover a firm that enriches them, after which they should discover a firm that produces gasoline components for them, in response to Stier.

“All these processes are very long-term … that can’t be changed within 1-3 years,” he stated.

Western nations are attempting to chop their dependence on Russia’s nuclear gasoline

Po stated the US acknowledges that it has been “heavily dependent on foreign sources”, together with Russia.

Stier identified that Western nations — just like the US — are actively taking steps to finish this reliance. In September 2024, the US, for instance, introduced the plan to construct a brand new uranium enrichment facility in Tennessee.

A legislation banning the import of uranium from Russia got here into impact in August 2024. But that does not imply the US has utterly weaned itself off Russia. Waivers till the top of 2027 be sure that crucial reactor gasoline stays obtainable in the course of the shift away from Moscow’s provide.

Untangling itself from the Russian nuclear provides can be a problem for the EU. On January 26, the European Commission (EC) introduced the newest plan to finish import of vitality from Russia. It laid out “a regulation to prohibit imports of Russian gas” and talked about the plan to “submit a legislative proposal at the beginning of 2026 to prohibit imports of Russian oil.”

But the language for Russia’s nuclear sector appears much less bold. The EC famous that “the aim would be to replace Russian nuclear fuel, the last remaining Russian energy source still imported to the EU, with fuel from European sources where possible.”

Edited by: Andreas Becker & Gianna Grün

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