Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western measures have heavily targeted Moscow’s oil and gas revenues, from US tariffs on purchasers of Russian crude to the EU’s plan to phase out Russian gas by 2027. One major energy sector, however, has largely avoided comparable sanctions: nuclear power.
State-owned Rosatom and its subsidiaries have been steadily expanding a global nuclear presence. Rosatom sells turnkey nuclear packages — financing, construction and core systems like the Nuclear Steam Supply System — and says the business is commercially vital. In 2024 the company reported $18 billion in overseas revenue, up about 10% year on year. That sum is small compared with hydrocarbon earnings, but the strategic influence of nuclear ties goes well beyond immediate sales.
Rosatom projects are under way around the world: Rooppur in Bangladesh, El Dabaa in Egypt, Balkhash in Kazakhstan, Hungary’s Paks II inside the EU, and Akkuyu in Turkey, a NATO member. Finland did cancel a Rosatom contract after the 2022 invasion, yet many agreements have continued. Analysts see these deals as the result of a long-term strategy to secure market footholds.
Moscow has also pushed nuclear cooperation in parts of the Global South where electricity demand is still modest. In recent years Rosatom signed memorandums and cooperation agreements with several African states, including Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. These pacts are often framed as preliminary steps toward eventual plant construction, even when actual implementation may be years away.
A central objective behind this outreach is access to uranium. In 2025 Russia announced plans to mine uranium in Niger, a country that had historically supplied uranium to France, with Russian officials describing the effort as building a complete system for peaceful nuclear development. Political shifts in the Sahel and criticism of former colonial powers have opened space for deeper ties with Moscow, and Russian messaging stresses noninterference: it presents itself as an economic and technological partner rather than a political patron.
Nuclear cooperation tends to create long-term dependencies. Purchasing a Russian-built plant usually entails decades of support and services — planning, fuel supply, enrichment and maintenance can bind a customer to Russian providers for “at least four to six decades,” according to one legal expert. Those commercial ties can be converted into diplomatic leverage: observers note that some countries hosting Russian nuclear projects have frequently abstained or avoided hostile votes on Russia in international fora since 2022. Voting patterns are not uniformly pro-Russian, but infrastructure projects can widen Moscow’s political room for maneuver.
Another source of leverage is Russia’s dominant role in enriched uranium. Between 2013 and 2023 Moscow exported roughly $20.5 billion worth of enriched uranium — more than other suppliers over that period. The nuclear fuel chain spans mining, enrichment and fabrication into fuel elements, a multi-stage process that takes years to reorganize, which makes rapid supplier switches difficult.
Western governments are trying to reduce reliance on Russian nuclear fuel. The United States has acknowledged heavy dependence on foreign supplies and taken steps to build domestic capacity, including plans announced in 2024 for a new enrichment facility in Tennessee. A US law banning imports of Russian uranium took effect in August 2024, though waivers permit certain supplies to continue through 2027 to avoid short-term reactor fuel shortages.
The EU’s energy strategy aims to eliminate Russian gas imports and includes commitments to replace Russian nuclear fuel with European sources where feasible. But EU language and measures on nuclear supplies have been less decisive than those on hydrocarbons, reflecting the technical complexity and long lead times of fuel supply chains.
Russia’s nuclear diplomacy also reaches major powers. Post-Cold War cooperation and treaties once shaped US-Russia nuclear relations, but ties frayed after Crimea in 2014 and deteriorated further after 2022, with many agreements suspended or allowed to lapse. Meanwhile, Russia continues to leverage Soviet-era experience and technical expertise to offer competitive commercial packages abroad.
In public forums, Russian leaders have promoted nuclear expansion as support for the Global South and rejected charges of technological colonialism. Moscow presents its approach as an alternative to Western actors: financing, turnkey projects and long-term service without political conditionality.
Taken together, construction contracts, fuel exports and uranium deals make Russia’s nuclear reach a strategic instrument: smaller in revenue than hydrocarbons but capable of creating decades-long dependencies, supply vulnerabilities and diplomatic influence. Western efforts to diversify enrichment and fuel fabrication may erode that leverage over time, but the technical and temporal barriers mean disentangling nuclear relationships will be a prolonged and complex task.