Since the vote, which saw 70 percent of Kazakhs cast ballots in favor of a nuclear plant to replace decrepit coal plants and lighten the country’s carbon footprint, Kazakh officials have nominally supported the creation of an international consortium—which may or may not include Rosatom—to build the plant, apparently thwarting Moscow’s long-held hopes of overseeing the project on its own.

But Moscow is having a hard time taking maybe for an answer. In the days following the vote, Rosatom sent word of its desire for an audience with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to discuss the coming plant build via Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The response was chilly. “Setting the president’s schedule is not the Ministry’s preview,” officials at the ministry wrote back to Rosatom.

But it’s hard to imagine that the former Central Asian Soviet republic will be able to ignore Rosatom’s overtures completely.

Over the course of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Rosatom and its brand of nuclear diplomacy abroad has become even more important to the Kremlin as it seeks to buttress current alliances and forge new ones. Rosatom is also deeply embroiled in the war itself, having taken control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the early days of the invasion.

Nonetheless, Rosatom’s broad list of customers for both reactor technology and fuel supplies — a list that includes many members of the EU as well as the United States — has thus far helped it dodge the sanctions that have befallen Russia’s other energy behemoths. As international consensus increasingly comes to regard nuclear energy as a climate friendly boon, Rosatom appears, for now, less likely to face the punitive embargoes levied against its fossil fuel cousins.

In a paper on Russian “nuclear energy diplomacy” published last year, scholars from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs argued that nuclear energy could be “Russia’s overlooked trump card in a decarbonizing world.” Kazakhstan seems aligned with this reasoning. In a draft bill by the nation’s energy ministry published after the nuclear vote, nuclear power will be regarded as a “green” energy source, much as it is in the EU.  

Kazakhstan also shares a Soviet past with Russia, a factor that the Norwegian analysts suggested might give Rosatom a leg up in its quest for a contract. But Nikitin noted that this Soviet cultural infrastructure was largely swept away following 2019, when Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet autocrat, finally relinquished power after three decades of rule.

“Of course, some connections from Soviet times could remain, but after Nazarbayev was removed from Kazakhstan, many of those who could have been a ‘Soviet connection’ were probably removed as well,” Nikitin said.

Still, in view of these historic apron strings there’s little doubt that the Kremlin hopes Kazakhstan will play ball.

“As I see it, Rosatom is very keen to get a place as a contractor in the construction of the Kazakh NPP,” said Bellona nuclear expert Alexander Nikitin, adding that the requested meeting with Tokayev “is evidence that Rosatom is very unsure of getting a place as a contractor and has decided to play big.”

Indeed, the Kazakh government has been, at best, elliptical about any role Rosatom would play in a future nuclear plant. China, France, and South Korea have been consistently mentioned alongside Russia by Kazakh officials as possible contractors of the plant, which will be located on the shores of Lake Balkhash on the Kazakh steppes.

But those countries lack Rosatom’s international profile. According to The World Nuclear Industry Status Report of 2024, Rosatom “is the primary constructor and exporter of reactors, building 26 out of the 59 units under construction worldwide as of mid-2024.”

At least 20 of those units are being built outside Russia, with Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, and Turkey among the clients.

And while nuclear power as a whole has lost some of its share of global power production since the 2011 Fukushima accident, the World Nuclear Association, an advocate for the global industry, characterizes Russia as “unashamedly nuclear.”

But despite this apparent foreign construction juggernaut, Nikitin says that Kazakh officials won’t miss that Rosatom is having trouble delivering.

The Rosatom-constructed Akkuyu nuclear plant in Turkey, for instance, has faced construction delays because of western sanctions on a number of Rosatom’s equipment suppliers, postponing the start of the first Russian-designed VVER-1200 reactor by almost a year. Sanctions on the supply chain are also putting the squeeze on the El Dabaa plant in Egypt, which Rosatom had promised to build by 2028.

In both circumstances, more than $20 billion-a-piece in financing from Rosatom has locked the countries into a decades-long dependence on Moscow, with little recourse to other suppliers should Rosatom fail to deliver—a scheme Nikitin warns Kazakhstan against.

“Rosatom’s sanctions problems have not ended,” said Nikitin. “They are only just beginning.”

By contrast, Nikitin noted, Kazakhstan’s suitors from China can point to nothing less than its own domestic nuclear boom, with 21 reactors currently under construction. And given Beijing and Astana’s warm relations, China’s calls are much more likely to be returned.

“If Rosatom gets some small share in the Kazakhstan’s construction, it will be a success for it,” said Nikitin. “But Kazakhstan needs to weigh everything very carefully, because construction in a consortium is primarily a partnership. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate Rosatom as a potential partner. How reliable and friendly it will be to other participants?”