Russian bear stealth attack for control of #Ukraine nuclear power-generating company

Energoatom President Yuriy Nedashkovsky (L) and Holtec President and CEO Dr. Kris Singh

Under cover of the aggressive radio noise and propaganda created by Russia’s sabre rattling in the Baltics, Crimea and eastern Ukraine this weekend, Russia is trying by stealth to take over control of Energoatom, the state-owned nuclear power generating company in Ukraine, writes James Wilson.

It is no secret that Russia has coveted this jewel in Ukraine’s industrial crown for many years. Control would give it not only strategic advantage in dictating energy policy to Ukraine, as Energoatom produces more than half of Ukraine’s electric power and is vital for Ukraine’s energy security during the winter. It would also enable Moscow to reverse the steps taken by the current management of the company to diversify supply of nuclear fuel, to build nuclear waste storage facilities in Ukraine, working with Western suppliers such as Holtec and Westinghouse to make Ukraine energy independent.

Nothing would suit Russia better than to return to the old soviet crony style of doing business with monopolistic supply of Russian materials and anti-competitive services from Russian contractors, rewarded with handsome commissions to the corrupt intermediaries in the Ukrainian State Administration that they like to do business with.

The stakes are big, because not only are these huge multi-billion dollar contracts in their own right, but Ukraine has successfully demonstrated to other EU countries which themselves have Russian built nuclear reactors that there is an alternative to relying 100% on the supply of nuclear fuel from Russia. By opening an industrial front in parallel to its military threats, Russia could win this commercial battle without firing a single shot.

According to reliable sources in Kyiv close to the Presidential Administration, this website has been informed that Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has ordered the dismissal this week of the President of Energoatom, Mr Yuriy Nedashkovsky with a view to executing this order before the new US Ambassador Marie L. Jovanovich arrives in Kyiv. Both Congress and the European Parliament are in recess, and moves by Poroshenko now could blindside and wrongfoot Brussels and Washington.

The same sources indicate that the candidate chosen by Poroshenko’s Administration to replace Mr Nedashkovskiy as President of Energoatom is Igor Gramotkin, the current Director General of the Chernobyl Nuclear Site, who has informally consented to be compliant with the schemes of President Poroshenko’s associates to grovel, reverse the strategic direction of Energoatom to integrate with the West, and default to de facto Russian manipulation of the enterprise.

We have also received evidence that most unusually, Igor Gramotkin has boasted privately in Kyiv about his ability to speak directly to the newly appointed US Ambassador Marie L. Jovanovich, and to persuade her not to interfere in the process of his appointment.

But let there be no mistake, the threatened replacement of Yuriy Nedashkovskiy as the Head of Energoatom will mean that the US and the EU will lose a vital industry champion for independence of Ukraine’s nuclear industry, and there will be a steady erosion of the strategy that he has pioneered, resulting in a dangerous re-orientation of the company’s direction to the East as a compliant Kremlin vassal satellite.

The author, James Wilson, is a founding director of the EU-Ukraine Business Council.

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