Nuclear Sovereignty vs. Russian Leverage: Lessons from Finland and Germany

The idea of building the Russian-backed Fennovoima nuclear plant in Finland was always fraught, even before Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022. By 2014—after Putin’s annexation of Crimea—it should have been unthinkable. Finland fought the Winter War (1939–40) to defend its sovereignty from Moscow, and the memory of Soviet aggression has always run deep. For a country with that history to proceed with a Russian state-owned nuclear supplier (Rosatom holding 34% of the project) was an extraordinary gamble with energy sovereignty.

The parallels with Germany are glaring. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder went to work for Gazprom and Rosneft after leaving office, and he personally lobbied for the Nord Stream pipelines, entrenching German dependence on Russian gas. That decision left Germany exposed when Putin turned energy into a weapon. Schröder didn’t initiate the nuclear phase-out—that was Angela Merkel after Fukushima in 2011—but he did set the stage by deepening Germany’s Russian energy ties while marginalizing nuclear as an option. Merkel’s phase-out then compounded the vulnerability by ensuring that Russian gas, not German nuclear, would be the “bridge fuel.”

Finland’s decision to buy electricity from Russia, or worse, to plan a Russian-built nuclear plant, looks even more reckless in hindsight. But the danger was visible long before 2014. Post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s was already marred by corruption, crime, and the rise of oligarchic energy power. Many observers worried—even then—that Russia’s energy dominance could become a geopolitical cudgel. To believe that Putin’s Russia would prove a reliable partner was to ignore history: Russia had always used resources as leverage over its neighbors.

So why did Finland do it? Partly cost and convenience: Russia offered cheap electricity and favorable terms through Rosatom. Partly a misplaced confidence that trade and interdependence could moderate Russia’s behavior, an echo of the same thinking in Berlin. And partly domestic divisions: Finland’s Greens opposed nuclear altogether, while some industry leaders desperate for stable baseload power accepted Rosatom as the only vendor willing to build Hanhikivi-1 under the financing conditions offered.

Still, it was a profound strategic error. But after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Finland smartened up: the Fennovoima consortium canceled its Rosatom deal for Hanhikivi-1, Finland stopped importing Russian electricity, and OL3 finally entered regular service—hardening Finland’s sovereignty with firm, domestic, zero-carbon power.

Just as important, the Finnish Greens rethought nuclear. As Earthrise Accord’s Marco Visscher and Tea Törmänen document, the party moved from skepticism to seeing nuclear as consistent with ecological responsibility and national security—a model for Europe’s broader realignment. (See Marco and Tea's October, 2022, piece "How Finland’s Green Party Chose Nuclear Power" in Palladium Magazine.)

The lesson stands: energy choices are inseparable from sovereignty. Ceding the backbone of your system to Moscow wasn’t merely bad policy; it was a direct gamble with national security.

Nuclear must lead the way to—and through—the transition: as the only firm, zero-carbon anchor that guarantees winter reliability, shields households and industry, and underwrites energy security, sovereignty, and independence.

This isn’t just rhetoric; the MIT Energy Initiative’s interdisciplinary study shows that deep-decarbonization pathways that retain and expand nuclear achieve far lower system costs and more reliable outcomes, whereas excluding nuclear makes decarbonization markedly harder and more expensive—undermining both climate and security goals. Europe can’t afford that strategic naïveté again.