The ties that (needn’t) bind: Rumen Radev roots for Rosatom

Ilian Vassilev

Bulgarian president Rumen Radev says Bulgaria is about to veto proposed EU sanctions against Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom. He cites Bulgarian national interest, so presumably he’s arguing that Bulgaria is too dependent on Rosatom for sanctions to be acceptable. If so, he’s wrong, for three reasons:

• First, Bulgaria’s dependence on Rosatom is diminishing rapidly – and something close to independence is quite feasible.
• Second, we should be wary about dealing with, or benefiting, a company so close to the dark heart of Russia’s nuclear weapons capability.
• Third, Mr Radev’s ideas on Russia and its relation to Bulgaria are more than 15 years out of date – and were wrong even then.

Many countries that used to belong to the former socialist camp – the communist bloc, if you prefer – have inherited from that era a nuclear-related energy dependence on the Soviet Union’s successor, Russia. That is a legacy which is hard to break, not least because the alternatives are neither close at hand nor easy to access.

The Grand Slam that wasn’t

For many years, detailed study of Russian energy has been at the centre of my professional work. What started this was my stint as Bulgaria’s ambassador in Moscow from 2000 to 2006 – in the early years of the presidency of Vladimir Putin. There, activities connected with the so-called “Energy Grand Slam” loomed large among my duties. The informal term “Grand Slam” referred to a trio of grandiose projects that had been proposed, involving Russia and Bulgaria, namely:

• The Bourgas-Alexandroupolis Pipeline, with a length of 279 km and an annual capacity of 35 million tonnes, which would have carried Russian oil from a Bulgarian port on the Black Sea to a Greek one on the Aegean;
• The South Stream pipeline – 2380 km long and with a capacity of 63 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year – which would have conveyed Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, and thence to Serbia and on to other countries in Southeast and Central Europe, bypassing those inconvenient Ukrainians, with whom Russia was already at odds; and
• A brand-new nuclear power plant (NPP) near the Bulgarian town of Belene on the Danube, which would have added 2 GW of capacity to a similar amount at Bulgaria’s older NPP at Kozloduy, also Russian-equipped.

The agreements were signed in 2006 by two leaders aligned with the Bulgarian Socialist Party (the former communists), who then occupied the highest offices of state, namely president Georgi Parvanov and prime minister Sergei Stanishev. In effect, the Grand Slam was to serve as both compensation and insurance for Russian economic and political interests after Bulgaria joined the European Union (EU) – which it duly did at the beginning of 2007.

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None of the projects was, in the end, implemented. Not, at least in its original form, though the current Turk Stream pipeline bears a certain family resemblance to South Stream, while the Belene NPP project was not abandoned before Bulgaria had paid a fortune for two Russian nuclear reactors that it now can’t use. However, the struggle to ensure that they weren’t implemented lasted several years. Which is where I came in: more than a decade ago, no longer subject to ambassadorial constraints, I wrote a study entitled “NPP Belene – mission impossible”, arguing at some length that the proposed nuke was not only a very bad idea from Bulgaria’s point of view, but also one that just wasn’t feasible. The paper has worn well and seems to be in demand even now. It could do with an update, but its main points are still relevant today. 

Rosatom sanctions: President Radev says “no”

Now, why this trip down memory lane? What triggered it was a recent statement by Rumen Radev, our current president, that Bulgaria was about to veto possible EU sanctions against the state-owned corporation Rosatom, that bastion of Russian nuclear energy, because they ran contrary to Bulgaria’s ‘national interests’. Mr Radev did not elaborate further on what, precisely, those interests were. But his underlying message was that Bulgaria’s nuclear energy sector would continue to depend on Rosatom and that this dependence went – and would continue to go – well beyond fuel, spare parts and licences.

The EU has always been sensitive to Bulgaria’s energy security concerns – most recently, granting the country a derogation, regarding the Union’s sanctions on imports of Russian crude oil, for the sake of the Lukoil-owned refinery in Bourgas. The question under consideration is, therefore, not a matter of indiscriminate sanctions against Rosatom and the Russian nuclear industry, but of sanctions whose scope has been agreed by consensus at the EU level and will be broadened gradually, at such a pace that benefits exceed costs – i.e. according to a timetable under which the damage inflicted by sanctions on EU member countries will not exceed the benefits arising from them.

President Radev is generally out of line with the EU mainstream, abusing critical gaps in Bulgaria’s constitution by means of a sequence of caretaker governments which exhibit excesses of presidential powers and an absence of checks on presidential actions. Given the lack of a regularly working Parliament, the caretaker government is an extension of Rumen Radev’s will, allowing him to engage in dangerous detours in foreign policy and energy security that do not reflect broad political consensus. And prominent among these detours is his series of vetoes on EU sanctions and his creation of hurdles impeding Bulgarian military assistance to Ukraine. The latter have been erected despite a clear resolution, passed by the Bulgarian Parliament, authorising the government to render such assistance.

And our president’s obstructionist antics have meant that a unique window of opportunity for the modernisation of Bulgaria’s armed forces is being missed. I have been informed by highly placed and reliable sources that President Radev has blocked acceptance of a lucrative and advantageous offer from NATO partners. This would involve a weapons swap under which Soviet-era weapons systems, currently held by the Bulgarian Army and Air Force, would be transferred to Ukraine in return for the supply to Bulgaria of Western military equipment badly needed for the modernisation of the Bulgarian Armed Forces, with Bulgaria paying a modest sum for the difference in value between the two transfers.

Like any other Bulgarian citizen, Mr Radev is entitled to his personal biases. However, as head of state, he has the responsibility to overcome his prejudices and focus on the common interest of Bulgarians rather than his immediate preferences.

Rosatom: a walk on the Dark Side

As a former ambassador to Russia and a close follower of developments in Russia’s energy sector, I am familiar with the strategic framework and practical aspects of Russia’s nuclear doctrine and its nuclear industry – both nuclear energy and strategic nuclear weapons. So, in what follows, I would like to draw President Radev’s attention to certain fundamental and unchangeable features of its nuclear energy industry and to the fact that it always functions as an instrument of the Kremlin’s policy. The implications will be clear. They are:

• First, that vetoing EU sanctions against Rosatom can hardly be in Bulgaria’s national interests; and
• Second, that, instead, it could presage a chronic problem, with far-reaching political, social and, above all, economic and financial consequences for the country – and for Bulgaria’s future in the EU and NATO.

Mr Radev would do well to grasp the fact that Rosatom is not only – and, indeed, not mainly – an element of a peaceful nuclear power industry. It is also, and above all, a critical strategic component of the Russian nuclear triad that threatens NATO and its members with destruction.

1. Rosatom has both a civilian and a military-strategic division. But there are no Fourth case study – Neftohim Burgas – data only. Following the imposition of the ban on the import of Russian crude oil into the EU, its refining at Neftohim has reached an all-time record. As they say, the seams are bursting. But despite the incantations of the caretaker government, that during the talks between President Radev and the caretaker prime minister, they agreed with Lukoil from January 1 to move their operations here, there has been no change. The purpose of the move was for Neftohim to import Russian crude oil and thus, as an importer, receive a discount for the Urals variety that we import, compared to the European benchmark – Brents. In recent months, the discount has varied between 30 and 40 dollars per barrel. To the godfather’s shame, Lukoil concedes a few dollars in discount, and everything else as a benefit is collected by Litasco, ergo leaves for Moscow. On a monthly basis, this is an amount that varies around 200 million dollars. Knowing what our morals are in the energy sector, is there material stimulation in particularly large amounts to the top persons in the state? I will not talk about morality – because these 200 million are taken from the pockets of fuel users. But this is the more well-known scheme – you have heard about the reshaping of ownership of Russian fuels in Bulgarian ports and their export to countries bordering Ukraine.

I conclude with a generalization made by a friend of mine – the Yugoslav embargo to a significant extent fed and pumped with steroids the organized crime in our country – which now hangs like a sword of Damocles over our heads. The embargo on Russian oil, gas, goods – currently catalyzes their smuggling through Turkey and the ports to an unprecedented extent. If we enter Schengen without controlling these flows – the new organized crime will be so rich and so powerful that it will be able to buy any Bulgarian government. Chinese walls between the two. Quite the reverse: resources and materials flow freely between them, while there seems to be no sense of exclusive turf when it comes to markets. For example, there is no guarantee that the money Rosatom received for those unused reactors we bought for Belene NPP has not ended up paying for nuclear warheads aimed at us.

In its military-strategic division, Rosatom is responsible for Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons and the production, verification and replacement of nuclear materials in the country’s nuclear missiles and bombs. It is unacceptable that the head of state of a NATO member, and a former military man at that, should fail to identify the threat Rosatom poses as the epitome of Russia’s doctrine of nuclear first strike against NATO members. Including us. 

What should we call such a failure? Well, take your pick. Is it misjudgment? Or is it treason?

2. In Russia’s military doctrine, the strategic value of NPPs built by Rosatom abroad is always looked at from two points of view. On the one hand, building and servicing them is seen as a commercial venture, while their strategic value is to do with the follow-on trade and services to them that add up to dependence throughout the life-cycle of the nuclear reactors in question. But, on the other hand, the NPPs are also assets that have the potential to be used for threatening and blackmailing their host countries.

Suffice it to consider events in Ukraine and the seizure of the Zaporizhzhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) by Russian occupation troops. Initially, it was thought that the Russians were motivated by the prospect of possessing a large-scale energy source allowing them to control a major asset of Ukraine’s energy system. Later, however, the ZNPP became part of Moscow’s target planning in the context of strategic speculation about the vulnerability it entailed for Ukrainian national security, amid speculations of a Russian first use of nuclear weapons. This was a question more of the threat of their use than of the likely prospect of their actual use. Yet it was a classic case of nuclear blackmail, with Kyiv and the world deliberately left guessing.

Moreover, even short of direct use of a nuclear weapon, a conventional strike on an NPP can’t be ruled out, and would have the paralysing effect of a nuclear bomb without the actual bomb. And, from the Russian point of view, it would have a distinct advantage. As hostilities progressed, it became increasingly clear that Mr Putin and Russia were constrained by various deterrent factors in considering a straightforward nuclear first strike, but saw no particular impediment to triggering one of two things:

• First, a “technogenic” catastrophe of unknown causation; or
• Second, a conventional strike on a Ukrainian nuclear plant – either from a hard-to-identify source or, more likely, one that could be made to look as if it had been carried out by the Ukrainians themselves.

Closer to home

But let’s return to Bulgaria.

The nuclear risk in the country’s energy sector exceeds the capacity of the Bulgarian state budget to accommodate and manage it. In peacetime, the problem is limited to the danger of a technogenic catastrophe, a risk nominally covered by nuclear risk insurance policies. Yet, in the case of the country’s single operating NPP, at Kozloduy, the plant’s nuclear risk insurance is inadequate by European standards and effectively transfers the entire risk to the Bulgarian state budget, in terms both of insurance for damage to the plant, equipment and personnel, and of insurance for damage to third parties inside and outside Bulgaria.

So far, so bad. But it gets worse, for this isn’t peacetime. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and the threat to its NPPs, the nuclear energy risks for Bulgaria positively glow amid the surrounding darkness, luridly and ominously.

On the one hand, protection of a nuclear power plant is a difficult thing to attain, even if the state invests billions of euros in the most sophisticated air defence or anti-terrorist systems. For they may prove ineffective on the as-yet-unknown day when they will really count.

On the other hand, we have to ask “protection against what?” Civilian nuclear power adepts usually point out that modern nuclear reactors can withstand a direct hit by a civilian airliner. No doubt. And that is a possible risk, so a relevant argument. But there is no defence against modern weapons designed to destroy concrete shelters and bunkers. These no reactor can withstand. And yes, there are international conventions; and there are commitments by states not to attack nuclear sites. But how much are these guarantees worth now that Mr Putin has ridden roughshod over the guarantees offered to Ukraine under the Budapest Agreement of 1994? Not very much, I think. Especially as Mr Putin himself is the most likely violator of such conventions and commitments in the near future.

“Dependence”: a bogus argument

And finally back to Mr Radev’s presumed argument that Bulgaria is “dependent” on Rosatom. The answer is that it isn’t. Or at least, that it needn’t be if it doesn’t want to be – and if it’s prepared to take some fairly obvious and easy steps.

Let’s consider fresh nuclear fuel, first. To date, Kozloduy NPP has sourced that entirely from Rosatom – or, more precisely, from its fuel division, Tvel – with the current contract running until 2025. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound promising, but in fact the problem of dependence has already been more or less solved. Under the contract, signed in 2019, Rosatom is planning a fuel delivery later in 2023, which might or might not materialise. But there is no fuel shortage, so Kozloduy has sufficient stocks of nuclear fuel laid in.

And when those finally run out, the NPP will be just fine, too, for it has also taken decisive steps towards diversification. These take the form of 10-year supply contracts signed in late December 2022 with the Swedish subsidiary of US firm Westinghouse (for Block 5 of the NPP) and with France’s Framatome (for Block 6: Blocks 1-4 of the older VVER-440 type, incidentally, were decommissioned long ago). Deliveries are due to begin in 2025. And the volumes of fuel involved are sufficient for the blocks’ operation, so the NPP won’t have to make a new contract with Tvel.

It’s not a perfect situation, for two reasons.

First, it seems that both of the Western firms might be charging a higher price than the Russians, who have had their own reasons for offering last-minute “generous” terms, just to state their case. But fuel price differences are a relatively slight consideration: in 2022, for instance, Kozloduy consumed just $100 million worth of Tvel nuclear fuel for each of its two blocks, but sold 16.5 terawatt-hours of electricity for more than $2.5 billion. And, incidentally, electricity prices have gone up significantly since then.

Second, Framatome and Westinghouse could be delivering fuel produced from Russian uranium. That means that risks remain, as Framatome’s fuel delivery is conditional on Rosatom’s supplies, which could be interrupted if levels of tension between Russia and the West became sufficiently high. Some might argue that Mr Putin “would never do that”, that it would be an irrational step. But that’s an unsafe argument. Cutting off gas supplies to Europe was another ‘never-going-to-happen”. Yet happen it did.

However, it can be argued that picking a fight with Framatome – a big customer that has a big state behind it – would be a more drastic step than picking on little Bulgaria. Mr Putin might do so. But it presupposes a more tension, more desperation. And is therefore less likely. At the end of the day Russian uranium is replaceable.

To sum up, Bulgaria’s dependence on Russia and Rosatom for fresh nuclear fuel has already been reduced drastically, as have risks, even if those risks are not zero. So Mr Radev can sleep a lot more easily on that score – dreaming, no doubt, of Grand Slams….

But, apart from fresh fuel, a further type of dependence on Rosatom could be cited. Namely, dependence on it for services related to the Kozloduy NPP in terms of operational procedures and control systems, spare parts, processing of used fuel, and certification of reactor life-extensions. Approaches to this subject diverge. On the one hand, deeply immersed in post-Soviet dependencies, proponents of the Russian nuclear industry insist that only Rosatom can validate reactor safety. On the other hand, the new Bulgarian names on the list of those sanctioned under the US Magnitsky Act include those of three prominent members of Bulgaria’s nuclear energy elite – former BSP energy minister Rumen Ovcharov and two former executive directors of  Kozloduy NPP, Ivan Genov and Alexander Nikolov. That leaves no doubt as to the level of concern among our allies that the industry’s penetration by Russian interests make it both a hostage to, and a conduit for, Mr Putin’s war aims.

As to the idea that Bulgaria is dependent on Rosatom, that is more a matter of perceptions than of an objective assessment of the range of alternatives open to the country.

It is the Bulgarian Agency for Nuclear Regulation (ANR) that is ultimately responsible for certifying the standard 10-year life extensions that Kozloduy’s two remaining reactors must receive when their licences expire – in 2027 in the case of Block 5 and 2029 in that of Block 6. Non-Russian labs and technical experts can do the technical checkups needed for the reactors to meet ANR’s standards. Ukrainian nuclear energy companies have developed independent technical expertise in servicing Soviet- and Russian-built nuclear reactors that can perfectly well replace Rosatom’s expertise. No one, after all, is challenging the safety of Ukrainian NPPs.

As to nuclear fuel safety, again, US nuclear fuel has been used in both Czech and Ukrainian NPPs. Therefore such fuel has been licensed both in Ukraine and in the EU. So there should be no major hurdles to the ANR Regulation permitting the use of US nuclear fuel in Bulgaria too.

On both counts, Bulgaria needs to learn to use the expertise of Ukrainian engineers and scientists before Kozloduy’s two reactors find a place as exhibits in a museum of post-Socialist nuclear curiosities.

(Not to mention, incidentally, the other two reactors so imprudently ‘bought’ under former prime minister Boyko Borissov for the NPP that was never built at Belene. The Kyiv Connection could come in handy in finding a use for these white elephants: the Ukrainians could either buy the reactors and use them in their future NPP, or else could help Bulgaria use them for the stalled new blocks at Belene – or perhaps for extra capacity at Kozloduy – bypassing Rosatom.

Let’s face it. Whether or not Mr Radev vetoes EU sanctions on Rosatom, no one is going to allow it to build or service nuclear units on EU territory – at least as long as the war lasts and as long as Russia remains an existential threat to the alliances of which Bulgaria is a member. After all, Rosatom is Mr Putin’s company, every bit as much as Gazprom is his, and it is the company responsible for the missiles aimed at NATO countries. That fact – and Rosatom’s consequent pariah status – is something that the likes of Mr Radev cannot change in the short-to-medium term. Not today. And not tomorrow.

Presidential perversity – and the need for clear choice

Bulgaria’s government made a strategic mistake all those years ago when it backed President Parvanov’s Energy Grand Slam idea. I do hate to say “I told you so”, but, well, I did! I warned the government about the scheme and, when the government didn’t listen, I registered my protest by asking the Minister of Foreign Affairs to terminate my contract as Ambassador to Russia.

The key line in my reports to the government had been that President Putin’s actions were increasingly hostile and unpredictable; and that, therefore, the risks associated with closer energy ties and strategic partnerships with Russia under his rule might become impossible to mitigate.

The truth of this should have been clear then. And it’s most certainly clear now!

And yet, with incredible perversity, President Radev doggedly persists in upholding President Parvanov’s legacy. In doing so, he’s even threatening to veto a decision that reflects the shared strategic interest of all EU and NATO countries – except Hungary, at least while the bizarre Viktor Orban remains in charge there. Namely, the shared interest in limiting the Putin regime’s revenues and Europe’s vulnerability to the possible use of NPPs by Russia as sleeping nuclear bombs.

One thing is sure. The recent additions to the list of those sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act has starkly exposed the choices that Bulgarians must make in the wake of Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. And there is no room whatever for wavering between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and our EU and NATO friends.