Russia is currently winning the competition with the US in the field of international energy co-operation. Moscow has concluded about 40 agreements on support in the nuclear sphere, while Washington has not signed even 12 such documents. This was stated by experts from the Energy for Growth Hub think tank Katie Auth and Todd Moss in an article for Foreign Policy.
The Foreign Policy piece points out that Russia is building powerful nuclear reactors in Bangladesh, Egypt, India and Turkey, and has already signed nuclear co-operation agreements with at least 40 countries. In contrast, the U.S. has “barely a dozen similar agreements.”
Kathy Auth and Todd Moss are convinced that Moscow’s success is due to extremely favourable offers for other countries and a well-developed financial infrastructure. The Russian state holding Rosatom provides the entire cycle of construction and operation of nuclear reactors, and all operations are financed through Russian banks. At the same time, U.S. companies face challenges even within the United States.
“The ramified structure of the American government forces nuclear corporations to overcome a complex bureaucratic mechanism consisting of no less than 25 instances of eight different federal agencies,” the analysts explained.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is going through a difficult period in Russian history. He emphasised that in the emerging conditions of the new world reality, “someone is striving” to preserve its fading hegemony through Russia.