The so-called Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program in the Russian Federation (MNEPR) had since 2003 brought together financial and technical resources from some of Europe’s biggest economies, as well as institutions like the European Commission, to launch massive efforts to clean up decommissioned Soviet nuclear submarines and the irradiated bases in the Arctic that served them.

It had also broadly functioned as an instrument of hope by providing an arena where Russia and the West could come together and work to improve the environment for people on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain. The cooperative agreement had endured some of the most trying political disputes of the early 21^st century, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hadn’t officially killed it.

But in a terse announcement earlier this month, Russian officials cited by the state sponsored newswire Interfax said they had prepared a “denunciation” of the MNEPR, which facilitates Moscow’s withdrawal from the agreement—a legal necessity under Russian law given that the agreement was ratified by Russia’s parliament.

“By denouncing the MNEPR Agreement, Russia has finally—and most likely forever—closed the possibility of international nuclear and environmental cooperation in the Arctic,” said Bellona’s Alexander Nikitin, who was active in the early talks that brought the agreement into being.

First among MNEPR’s early projects was the dismantlement of three derelict Soviet nuclear submarines, a project carried out at Russia’s Nerpa Shipyard near Murmansk on Norwegian funding. The reactor compartments from those subs were later secured at Gremikha and Saida Bay in nuclear storage sites financed by the German government.

MNEPR cooperation also made dramatic inroads toward cleaning up Andreyeva Bay, a former nuclear submarine maintenance base in the Murmansk Region close to the Norwegian border. Entering service in the 1960s, Andreyeva Bay amassed some 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies from 100 submarines throughout its operation, and at one point leaked radioactive contamination into the Barents Sea from one of its spent fuel storage buildings.

Nikitin and Bellona had for years mounted efforts to ignite cleanup operations at Andreyeva Bay, and finally, in 2017, on Norwegian and British funding funneled through MNEPR, safe removal of the accrued spent fuel and radioactive waste began.

Italy also got in on the action, contributing a special vessel called the Rossita that was designed to ferry spent nuclear fuel assemblies from Andreyeva Bay to a railhead at Atomflot, Russia’s nuclear icebreaker port, from where they would be sent to storage in the Ural Mountains.

Along the way, contributions to MNEPR—which were handled by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development—helped finance a project to rid the Arctic of navigation beacons powered by radioactive fuel. Called radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, the devices were powered by strontium batteries that we susceptible to vandalism and theft. In a project spearheaded by Norway, these beacons in Russia’s Northwest were all safely dismantled and replaced by beacons operating on solar power.

The cooperative agreement also contributed to ongoing work at Saida Bay and Gremikha and helped develop a vast infrastructure for handling radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in Northwest Russia, which previously had not existed—and which is still in use to this day.

“I think that this was one of the best global nuclear safety projects implemented at the facilities of the Northern Fleet of Russia,” said Nikitin of the agreement.

But then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 froze further progress as Moscow decisively cut ties with the West.

“Countries such as Norway, France, Italy, England remained participants in the projects almost until the very beginning of the war,” Nikitin added. “And if not for the war, the most difficult projects in Andreeva Bay and Gremikha would have been finally completed.”

Indeed, further cleanup operations at Andreyeva Bay have, by all reports, slowed to a crawl since the war began. In fact, Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which oversees nuclear remediation projects, declared in summer of 2023 that it had finished all of its cleanup projects in Northwest Russia—a drastically premature assessment.

“On the one hand, it is regrettable that all projects have not been completed,” said Nikitin. “But at the same time, today it is clear and obvious that Russia’s goals are to increase nuclear facilities in the Arctic seas, build new nuclear submarines and maximize armament.”