Rosatom

Rosatom is Russia's state nuclear corporation, established in 2007 by presidential decree, consolidating over 350 enterprises, from weapons design and uranium enrichment to civilian power generation and the world's only nuclear-powered icebreaker fleet. It accounts for roughly 90% of global nuclear power plant construction exports, a dominance long viewed by European governments as a strategic-dependency risk. Rosatom built and has operated Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant since the mid-1990s under a 1992 agreement with Iran, and operates the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in occupied Ukraine, having assumed administrative control after the Russian seizure of the plant in March 2022. Its director-general since 2016 is Alexei Likhachev. Rosatom's 2026 position is structurally contradictory: it bears operational responsibility for reactor safety at two sites under active conflict, Bushehr and ZNPP, making it both an operational risk and a diplomatic circuit-breaker across two separate wars.

Rosatom completed the evacuation of most personnel from Bushehr in April 2026, with CEO Alexei Likhachev confirming on 20 April via TASS that 24 volunteers remained at a plant holding 72 metric tonnes of fresh nuclear fuel and 210 metric tonnes of spent fuel. Bushehr, built and operated by Rosatom since the mid-1990s under a 1992 agreement, rescued a German-built project abandoned after the 1979 revolution and connected to Iran's National Grid in 2011, with a second unit under construction by 2025.

Likhachev tabled three options for Iran's Highly Enriched Uranium: transfer to Russia for dilution and return; equivalent natural uranium delivered in exchange; or financial payment. That offer, advanced publicly through Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, remained standing as of 13 April 2026, though its implementation now requires Russian technicians no longer in Iran. Iran depends on Rosatom not only to operate Bushehr but to supply enriched fuel, making the relationship structurally asymmetric and difficult to exit. Washington has treated Rosatom's presence at Bushehr as a complicating factor in targeting decisions, given the risk of killing Russian nationals.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi held talks with Rosatom in Kaliningrad on 10 July 2026, hours after which he declined to confirm Iran's claim that a US strike had hit Bushehr's perimeter the previous day, saying inspectors had "not observed or confirmed any direct attack" on the plant. The venue mattered: a non-confirmation delivered from inside Russia's nuclear orbit, hours after meeting the operator that built and fuels Bushehr, carried more weight against Iran's claim than a statement from Vienna would have, precisely because Rosatom has a direct commercial stake in how any damage claim to its own reactor is adjudicated.

Rosatom operates the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) under Russian occupation and has administered the site since the seizure in March 2022. CEO Alexei Likhachev escalated Russia's public posture on ZNPP on 30-31 May 2026, accusing Ukraine of a deliberate fibre-optic-guided drone strike on the turbine building adjacent to reactor 6, the first confirmed strike on a reactor-adjacent structure, and stating the attack brought the region 'one step closer to a nuclear incident'. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi condemned the strike. The accusation follows Likhachev's 17 May 2026 attack on the IAEA Secretariat, in which he accused the watchdog of 'effectively ignoring' Ukrainian strikes on ZNPP, the first such Russian-state assault on the agency's credibility since the occupation began.

The pattern of public accusations serves a dual purpose: pre-assigning blame for any nuclear incident to Ukraine while undermining the IAEA Mediation track that Grossi requires to broker repair ceasefires. The 750 kV main feeder has been disconnected for over 70 days; the plant runs on the sole Ferosplavna-1 backup line. Rosatom simultaneously bears operational responsibility for reactor safety at ZNPP and holds the diplomatic offer to break the Iran enrichment deadlock via custody of Iran's Highly Enriched Uranium, placing Moscow in a structurally contradictory position across both conflicts.

Rosatom's administration of ZNPP faced fresh strain in mid-July 2026: a drone killed the plant's chief engineer, Alexander Yakovlev, and his driver at the site's boundary with Enerhodar on 15 July, days after the town's fire station was struck again on 13 and 14 July. The IAEA separately reported that ZNPP had lost off-site power for the 22nd time since 2022, with ten of those twenty-two losses concentrated in the preceding three months, an accelerating pattern for a plant Rosatom has run since the March 2022 seizure; neither event has been publicly attributed.