Ukraine pushes EU to sanction Rosatom after Egyptian nuclear safety failures

Ukraine has renewed its demand that the European Union place Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom on its sanctions list, citing fresh evidence of safety failures at the company's flagship overseas project in Egypt. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha made the call on 17 August after Politico reported that Rosatom's El Dabaa nuclear project in Egypt suffers from "violations of nuclear safety culture" and a series of "safety, security, and engineering failures."

"Ukraine has long warned European governments against any cooperation with Rosatom, and we believe it is time to restart serious talks about EU sanctions against it," Sybiha wrote on X. "To the EU and its member states: please, do listen to Ukraine! Sadly, no other country in the world knows better why Moscow cannot be trusted in the atomic energy sphere."

Politico investigation triggers renewed pressure

The Politico investigation, published days before Sybiha's statement, detailed what it described as a pattern of safety, security and engineering failures at the El Dabaa construction site on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. The project, Rosatom's largest overseas contract, involves four VVER-1200 reactors and is valued at roughly $25 billion. Politico's reporting, based on internal documents and interviews with engineers, alleged concrete quality issues, welding deficiencies, and a management culture that discouraged reporting of safety concerns. Rosatom has not publicly responded to the specific allegations in detail.

For Kyiv, the Egyptian revelations reinforce a long-standing argument: that Rosatom is not merely a commercial enterprise but an instrument of Russian state power whose operations abroad create dependency and risk. Ukraine imposed its own sanctions on Rosatom in February 2023, a year after Russia's full-scale invasion began, and has lobbied Brussels to follow suit ever since.

Hungary's veto keeps Rosatom off the EU list

The obstacle remains the same as it has been since 2022: EU sanctions require unanimity among all 27 member states, and Hungary refuses to agree. Budapest's position is rooted in concrete commercial interests. Rosatom is the prime contractor for the Paks II expansion of Hungary's only nuclear power plant, a project to add two VVER-1200 units to the existing four Soviet-era reactors at Paks in central Hungary. The contract, signed in 2014 and financed largely by a Russian state loan, is valued at €12.5 billion.

The Paks II project has already encountered difficulties. Construction stalled over the summer of 2024 due to drought conditions that limited the Danube water available for cooling, a reminder of the climate vulnerabilities that nuclear operators across Europe increasingly face. Hungary's government, led by Viktor Orbán, has consistently argued that energy security requires maintaining nuclear cooperation with Rosatom, and that sanctions would jeopardise the Paks expansion and Hungary's long-term electricity supply.

Rosatom's expanding European footprint

Hungary is not the only EU member with active Rosatom projects. In Turkey, a NATO member but an EU candidate country, Rosatom is building the four-unit Akkuyu nuclear power plant on the Mediterranean coast. The first unit is scheduled to begin commercial operation in 2025, making it Turkey's first nuclear power station. The project is owned and operated by a Rosatom subsidiary under a build-own-operate model, meaning Rosatom retains long-term operational control.

In Germany, Rosatom's footprint is more contested. The company holds a stake in the Uranium Enrichment Company (Urenco) through a complex ownership structure involving the Gronau enrichment plant in Lower Saxony. Germany's coalition government has sought to reduce Russian nuclear dependencies since 2022, but legal and contractual complexities have slowed disentanglement. The Lower Saxony connection illustrates how deeply Rosatom is embedded in European nuclear supply chains, not merely as a reactor builder but as a participant in the fuel cycle.

Lithuania leads the push for a harder line

Lithuania has emerged as the most vocal EU advocate for sanctioning Rosatom. Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has repeatedly proposed listing the company, arguing that its revenues feed directly into Russia's war economy. "We cannot put economic interests above our security interests," Budrys told reporters in July. "The only responsible policy against this backdrop is to cut all nuclear energy cooperation with Moscow, end all dependence on Russia in the nuclear energy sector, and sanction Rosatom."

Lithuania's position carries particular weight because the country has direct experience of Russian nuclear leverage. The Ignalina nuclear plant, a Soviet-era Chernobyl-type facility, was closed as a condition of Lithuania's EU accession in 2004. Since then, Lithuania has sought to diversify its energy supply, culminating in the 2024 synchronisation of its electricity grid with the continental European network and disconnection from the Russian-controlled BRELL grid. For Vilnius, Rosatom sanctions are not abstract: they are the logical completion of a two-decade effort to escape Russian energy coercion.

The Chernobyl legacy and Zaporizhzhia

Sybiha's reference to Chernobyl is deliberate. The 1986 disaster at the Chornobyl plant in northern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, was compounded by a systemic cover-up that historians argue accelerated the Soviet Union's loss of legitimacy. Ukraine's 1991 independence referendum, in which more than 90 percent voted for independence, followed five years later. For Kyiv, the institutional culture that produced the Chernobyl cover-up is the same culture that now runs Rosatom.

Since February 2022, Russian forces have occupied the Chornobyl site for several weeks, damaging the containment facility and monitoring systems, and have occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, since March 2022. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has maintained a continuous presence at Zaporizhzhia since September 2022, warning repeatedly of the risk of a nuclear accident caused by military activity, loss of off-site power, or degradation of safety systems. Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, manages the plant's operations under occupation.

The unanimity trap and possible workarounds

The EU's unanimity requirement for sanctions has become a structural vulnerability that Moscow exploits. Hungary's veto on Rosatom is not isolated: Budapest has also blocked or delayed sanctions on Russian gas, nuclear fuel, and certain individuals close to the Kremlin. Some EU diplomats have floated the idea of moving certain sanctions decisions to qualified majority voting, but that would require treaty change, a non-starter in the current political climate. Others suggest a coalition of willing member states could impose national restrictions on Rosatom, but that would fragment the single market and create legal challenges.

Another option, discussed in Brussels but not yet acted upon, is to target Rosatom's revenue streams without a formal entity listing. The EU has already banned imports of Russian coal, oil, and most petroleum products. Extending similar restrictions to nuclear fuel services, where Rosatom's subsidiary Tenex is a significant supplier to EU reactors, would hit the company's finances without requiring Hungary's approval for a new sanctions designation. However, several member states, including France, Sweden, and the Czech Republic, still rely on Russian enrichment services or fuel fabrication for their Soviet-designed reactors, and transitioning to alternative suppliers takes years.

What the Egyptian revelations change

The Politico revelations about El Dabaa add a new dimension: they move the argument from geopolitics to nuclear safety. If Rosatom's safety culture is deficient at a showcase project in Egypt, the argument goes, European regulators should question whether Rosatom-built or Rosatom-serviced reactors in Europe meet the safety standards required by the EU's Nuclear Safety Directive and the Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association (WENRA) reference levels. The European Nuclear Safety Regulators Group (ENSREG) has not issued a formal statement on the El Dabaa allegations, but national regulators in several member states are understood to be reviewing the reporting.

For the European Commission, the Egyptian allegations create a dilemma. The Commission is guardian of the Euratom Treaty and the Nuclear Safety Directive, but it has no direct regulatory authority over a project in Egypt. What it can do is assess whether Rosatom's European activities, at Paks II, at the Gronau enrichment plant, in fuel supply contracts, are affected by the same safety culture deficiencies. If national regulators conclude that they are, the Commission could propose restrictions on Rosatom's European operations on safety grounds, bypassing the sanctions unanimity requirement.

The European Council's sanctions framework requires unanimity for new designations, a rule that has protected Rosatom since the invasion began. The Council's sanctions policy page outlines the procedure, but the political reality is that a single member state can block action indefinitely. Until Hungary's calculation changes, or until a safety-based restriction bypasses the sanctions process, Rosatom will continue to operate in Europe, build reactors on Europe's periphery, and sell fuel services to European utilities.

The coming months will reveal whether the Egyptian safety allegations are a turning point or merely another data point in a long stalemate. National regulators' technical assessments, due in the autumn, may matter more than any foreign minister's statement. If they find that Rosatom's safety culture poses a risk to European installations, the legal basis for action shifts from foreign policy to nuclear safety, a domain where the Commission has stronger tools and Hungary has less say.