Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, would like its growing list of global customers to think that nuclear energy production and supply are above politics. The reality is, however, that Rosatom is just another means of implementing President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical grand strategy. Energy dependence is one of many ways that Moscow seeks to exert influence and control. For these reasons, Asian leaders should be gravely concerned by a recently inked agreement between Russia and the Myanmar military junta to build a new nuclear power plant in the conflict-ridden southeast-Asian nation.
Russia’s support for successive military regimes in Myanmar is well-documented and longstanding. Russian weapons and aircraft are widely used in the regime’s ongoing war against the civilian population, including in daily airstrikes across the country.
There have long been nuclear dimensions to Russian support for oppression in Myanmar. In 2007, Myanmar’s Science and Technology Minister signed the first known nuclear cooperation agreement in Moscow. Both parties continued to develop their projects over time. In 2023, following a new atomic energy cooperation agreement between Russia and Myanmar, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing publicly acknowledged Rosatom’s involvement in Myanmar. Finally, after talks in Moscow in March of this year, Putin and Min Aung Hlaing signed an agreement to build a modest nuclear power facility in Myanmar. A month prior, the two countries also struck a massive deal to build a port and an oil refinery in the controversial Dawei Special Economic Zone, on Myanmar’s Andaman coast.
Rosatom’s cooperation with Myanmar’s military junta amounts to complicity with its atrocity crimes. The corporation is not “above politics”; it legitimizes repression. This is made even more apparent in its involvement in the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine.
Since March 2022, Russian troops, with help from Rosatom, have taken over Europe’s biggest nuclear plant. Of particular concern are the widespread, systemic human rights violations taking place at the ZNPP since Russia’s occupation of the plant. According to numerous survivor testimonies, Rosatom has been complicit in the torture, interrogation, and detention of ZNPP employees. The corporation has also played a key role in coercing ZNPP employees to sign contracts with Rosatom and to obtain Russian citizenship. At least one ZNPP employee is confirmed to have been tortured to death.
In some cases, nuclear personnel have even been forced to work shifts immediately following interrogation, physical abuse, and sleep deprivation. This directly endangers international nuclear safety and security, in which operator responses can make a crucial difference. In light of evidence that Russia plans to raise the stakes further by restarting one or more of the ZNPP’s six reactors, which are currently in the safer cold shutdown mode, questions of nuclear security cannot be ignored and have been raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
As its actions in Ukraine make clear, Rosatom cannot be considered an apolitical corporate actor. Instead, it must be recognized for what it is – effectively an arm of the Russian state – and held accountable as such. For Myanmar’s neighbors and the broader Asian region, where energy security is a top priority, Rosatom may appear to offer an opportunity. However, what it actually brings is long-term risk: political dependence, reputational damage, and complicity in atrocity crimes.
Any new nuclear project must be assessed not only for cost efficiency, but also for legal and ethical legitimacy. Partnering with Rosatom today means entering strategic cooperation with a state-owned enterprise that is implicated in war crimes, nuclear safety violations, and support for multiple repressive regimes.
We urge governments, civil society, scientific institutions, and international trade unions to oppose Rosatom’s involvement in Myanmar and condemn its actions in Ukraine. All relevant institutions should immediately suspend nuclear cooperation with Rosatom and its subsidiaries, investigate corporate complicity in crimes in Ukraine and Myanmar, and push the U.N. and IAEA to enforce international standards and exclude Rosatom from legitimacy-granting platforms like the U.N. and Global Compact. Nuclear safety must be treated as a non-negotiable condition of operations at the ZNPP and beyond. Justice should be ensured for unlawfully detained ZNPP workers and others subjected to repression. As Ukrainian and Myanmar human rights defenders, we believe these steps will contribute to our shared security.
Nuclear energy cannot be separated from atomic responsibility, and nuclear responsibility cannot be separated from the nature of the actors involved. If the world continues to tolerate Rosatom’s complicity in atrocities from Myanmar to Ukraine, it sends a dangerous message: that energy deals can excuse torture, occupation, and state-sponsored human rights violations.