CLARIFYING AMERICAN MEDIA ON URANIUM SANCTIONS VIOLATIONS

June 18, 2023 -Durt Fibo

Some people, including very well intentioned Americans, and some with experienced military understanding, recently reproduced an article from Business Insider and distributed by MSN 3 days ago titled: “The US is sending $1 billion every year to Russia’s nuclear program, despite pledging to cripple its economy with sanctions”. You can find the article easily enough, so I won’t put a link here, as that would confuse any browser looking for this article I’m now writing. The points of that short article are (A): reiterating what it says in the title but without naming specific US buyers circumventing sanctions against Russia, (B): Accusing the unnamed US buyers of purchasing enriched uranium from Rosatom -which is indeed the Russian state Atomiс Energy Corporation-, and (C): that Rosatom has been running Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant since its capture from Ukraine in early March of 2022. But it never claims that any of the uranium comes from the Zaporizhzhia plant. In fact, read the article and you’ll see it never mentions the plant again after the single reference to its 2022 takeover by Russia.

In sum: despite having drawn on such sources as The New York Times, the Royal United Services Institute, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Chatham House, and The Washington Post, the article in question somehow emphasizes a connection between US buyers evading sanctions against Russia with the Russian’s seizure and continued control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, but doesn’t tie it up in writing beyond mentioning Rosatom as a seller and as the appointed new “owner” of the Zaporizhzhia plant.

I know that many private and governmental operations in many countries are continuing commercial violations of the sanctions (I’ve covered many instances of that, for example here: The Rest Of The West In Russia (Jan, 2, 2023) https://derkoolschrank.com/the-rest-of-the-west-in-russia/ but this MSN piece is unclear, which is a bad idea in any wartime journalism.

I suspect what tacitly underlies the article is that in 2022, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi told the World Economic Forum at Davos that there were 30 tons of plutonium and 40 tons of enriched uranium stockpiled in the Zaporizhzhia plant. After that statement, by May, 2022, the stockpile idea was denounced as untrue by Oleh Korikov, then acting director of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (Держатомрегулювання Інспекція України -ДЕРЖІУ-). In fact, Korikov publicly denounced Grossi’s lack of real information (not remarkable, since Zaporizhzhia had not been much in the IAEA’s thoughts before its capture), saying: “It is very sad that the bold lies of Russian propaganda are broadcast at a high level by the IAEA’s top official.”

Hopefully this will explain what the hell the MSN article sputtering around like a popped balloon is actually supposed to be about.