Among the potential casualties of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine is the long tradition of cooperation between Washington and Moscow to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, common interests drove the United States and Soviet Union to co-author the rules governing nuclear technologies and materials and to seek global cooperation and trade in nuclear energy while preventing weapons proliferation. That cooperation and commerce continued in the post–Cold War period despite a range of security crises in Asia and the Middle East, souring relations, and increasingly being on opposing sides of international issues.
Regardless of this history and shared interest, Moscow and the West began to diverge on several nuclear nonproliferation fronts about a decade before Russia invaded Ukraine. Since the invasion, a more apparent adversarial divide has emerged. Today, for instance, rather than sustaining international pressure on North Korea and Iran over their nuclear and missile programs, Russia is purchasing ballistic missiles and other arms from both countries—in flagrant violation of UN resolutions—and using them against targets in Ukraine. In this respect, the fallout from the Russian invasion probably accelerated underlying trends in both Washington and Moscow to prioritize other security interests over nonproliferation. Russia’s 2023 Foreign Policy Concept effectively deprioritizes nonproliferation and elevates strategic stability and deterrence, but whether this reflects a fundamental change in Russian interests or a short-term shift in preferences is unclear. Russia appears to be moving away from its previous policy that often compartmentalized nonproliferation from broader schisms with the West toward a policy that actively seeks to link it to the deep tensions in Russia-West relations. Accordingly, it is hard to imagine Russian and American leaders seeing eye to eye on a pressing proliferation case, especially if it involves a state that is perceived as both a U.S. partner and Russian adversary or vice versa.
Yet with heightened global interest in nuclear energy, Russia and the United States still have good reason to sustain a common cause on nonproliferation. And so while the long tradition of U.S.-Russian nonproliferation alignment is in imminent danger, there is some prospect it could survive. A growing divergence on nonproliferation concerns and on strategic approaches to Iran, North Korea, and nuclear governance is certainly evident right now, but a considered assessment reveals the potential for realignment of some U.S.-Russia interests in the longer term.
Diverging Views and Policies
After the Cold War, Washington and Moscow continued to collaborate on the rules around nuclear governance and to police the nuclear programs of their respective partners. In the 1990s, Russia largely supported multilateral diplomacy to uncover and reverse Iraq’s nuclear programs, assist the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with verifying South Africa’s nuclear weapons disarmament, and encourage India and Pakistan to exercise restraint after they tested nuclear weapons in 1998. But by the early 2000s, particularly in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Russia began to object to the United States’ seemingly more muscular counterproliferation actions and policies—viewing them as unjustified and illegal violations of state sovereignty. Moscow also has long been unhappy with perceived U.S. double standards when it comes to nonproliferation, whereby Washington seeks special treatment for its allies while punishing its adversaries. It points out instances—such as the 2005 U.S.-India nuclear deal—in which Washington has sought exceptions to international rules to pursue its own strategic or commercial interests and those of its international partners. Though this narrative is instrumental insofar as Russia uses it to garner international support for its policies and actions, it is not without basis. Big powers tend to uphold international rules that serve their interests until the rules conflict with other priorities, at which point the powers work around them.
Moscow maintains these views today. The clearest indication of Russia’s ongoing prioritization of state sovereignty is its contestation of efforts to broaden the concept and implementation of IAEA safeguards. Agency inspectors use these safeguards as their chief mechanism to monitor states’ compliance with nonproliferation commitments. Around 2010, drawing on experiences in Iran and elsewhere, a “friends of safeguards” group of mainly Western countries began encouraging IAEA safeguards officials to make wider use of information provided by third parties and data analytic tools to gain a better understanding of a state’s entire nuclear-related activities. Western intelligence services often provided this information. The evolving concept of state-level safeguards became a battleground for U.S. and Russian diplomats in Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered; questions about intrusions on state sovereignty were at the core of the dispute. Russia’s primary objection is that IAEA use of a broader range of information, including that provided by third parties, could introduce bias and discrimination into IAEA safeguards analysis and encroach on state sovereignty. However, notably, Russia’s campaign against state-level safeguards coincided with the IAEA’s release of information (drawing on Western intelligence) that implicated at least one Russian technical expert in some of Iran’s undeclared nuclear activities.
In addition to objecting to a perceived expansion of the IAEA’s mandated activities, Russia has also articulated a more restrictive position on the Additional Protocol (AP), an enhanced safeguards instrument that provides the agency greater information and access in states that voluntarily implement the AP. The United States’ position is that recipients of nuclear fuel, equipment, and technology should be required to adopt the AP as a “condition of supply,” but Russia does not support this push and does not require its nuclear partners to conclude an AP with the IAEA. Moscow’s position—again, framed as a matter of sovereignty—is that concluding and implementing the AP should be voluntary.
The growing Russia-U.S. divide over safeguards and the broader tensions between U.S. counterproliferation programs and Russian sovereignty concerns long pre-date Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nevertheless, the invasion produced a sharper split on nonproliferation, especially in relation to diplomacy with Iran, engagement with North Korea, and multilateral nuclear governance discussions.
Preventing an Iranian Bomb
The effort to revive the Iran nuclear deal was among the first nonproliferation causalities of Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the past, Moscow and Washington occasionally diverged on Iran policy, particularly over the use of sanctions as a means of exerting pressure on Tehran. However, even when they disagreed on the means, Russian and American leaders generally shared the overarching goal of thwarting Iran’s nuclear breakout. The two countries worked relatively closely in negotiations with Iran that led in 2015 to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In 2018, former U.S. president Donald Trump walked away from the deal; his successor, Joe Biden, sought to resurrect the agreement but without success. Since 2022, however, Moscow has deviated from its previous efforts to constrain Iran’s nuclear activities. Instead, it has dismissed Western efforts to roll back Iran’s nuclear program, arguing that U.S. concerns are merely a façade for broader geopolitical aims to weaken Iran.
Over the last several decades, Iran’s relations with Russia have warmed, and Russia has often sought to mediate tensions between Iran and the West. Russian nuclear cooperation with Iran has increased in step with this trend. In 1995, Russia committed to completing the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which Germany had begun in the 1970s but abandoned after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Bushehr project effectively solidified Iran’s dependence on Russia for nuclear technology, expertise, and equipment. It also gave Moscow significant leverage, as demonstrated by Russia’s deliberate delays in construction and fuel delivery during periods when Iran was not complying with international directives to cease its illicit nuclear activities. After the Iranian nuclear file was referred to the UN Security Council (UNSC) in 2006, Russia actively supported multiple sanctions resolutions against Iran over the next four years. During this time, Moscow essentially followed a dual strategy, employing diplomatic means to dilute the impact of sanctions to sustain favor with Tehran while simultaneously using Iran as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from the West in other areas.
Despite Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the suspension of U.S.-Russia bilateral engagement on multiple issues, Moscow managed to compartmentalize the broader issues in U.S.-Russia relations and cooperate with Washington toward a diplomatic resolution to Iran’s nuclear program. During the JCPOA negotiations, Russian diplomats played a constructive role, especially on technical issues such as creating a 300-kilogram threshold for stockpiled low-enriched uranium, as well as on procedural matters such as the innovative sanctions snapback mechanism implemented in the agreement. Even after Russia joined Iran in a military campaign during Syria’s civil conflict to support President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Moscow continued to uphold JCPOA implementation by helping Iran export excess uranium. Russia staunchly condemned the United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and criticized Iran’s resulting decision to expand its uranium enrichment operations in 2019. Moscow even sought to facilitate the continued role of the IAEA in verifying Iran’s nuclear activities. Russian efforts to help resurrect the JCPOA continued until 2022. In fact, Russian interventions in 2021 appear to have prevented the talks in Vienna from collapsing on multiple occasions.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine occurred just as European negotiators believed they had edged close to a deal with Tehran on restoring the JCPOA. In March 2022, Russia demanded a written guarantee from the United States that Russian trade, investment, and military-technical cooperation with Iran would not be impeded by Western sanctions—the first in a series of demands that indicated Russia would no longer seek to insulate the Iranian nuclear issue from broader tensions with the West. More concerning, after Russia’s unsuccessful offensive into Ukraine in spring 2022 exhausted the supply of munitions, Russia was forced to look to Iran for the procurement of kamikaze drones, artillery shells, and potentially short-range ballistic missiles.
Russia’s purchase of drones not only violated the JCPOA’s arms embargo (still in force at that time) on missile-related technologies but also fundamentally transformed the dynamics of the Russia-Iran relationship. For the first time, Russia found itself reliant on Iran at a moment of true peril for President Vladimir Putin. Consequently, Russia has since been more vocal in defending Iran, emboldening Tehran’s maximalist policies on its nuclear program and shielding Iran within the IAEA. In June 2022, Russia vetoed the IAEA Board of Governors resolution that called for Iran to cooperate with IAEA inspections at three undeclared nuclear sites. After the vote, Iran disconnected IAEA cameras at nuclear sites and faced no protest nor concern from Russia, which instead blamed the board resolution for provoking Tehran. Subsequently, following the expiration of UN sanctions on Iran’s missile imports and exports in October 2023, Russia offered unequivocal support to Iran and condemned the decision by the E3 (France, UK, and Germany) to extend ballistic missile sanctions on Iran.
Russia’s evolved relationship with Iran carries significant implications for the future of U.S. and European efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program short of a weapon. Their diplomacy previously relied on Russian technical assistance to realize agreements and on Russian leverage to sustain Iranian compliance. For example, prior to the war in Ukraine, Russia was exploring ways to support the revival of the JCPOA by shipping out Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and decommissioning Iran’s advanced centrifuges. Washington can no longer count on such technical measures as part of any resolution to the current impasse over Iran’s nuclear program.
More broadly, Russia’s unwillingness to use its supply leverage to facilitate ongoing nuclear diplomacy with Iran—specifically by pressuring Tehran to grant the IAEA access to nuclear sites—suggests that its prior readiness to compartmentalize nonproliferation diplomacy toward Iran has ended. This shift has extended beyond the nuclear file as well. After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Russia condemned Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iranian-backed forces in southern Syria, a notable departure from Moscow’s prior acquiescence to such actions. In this context, Russia’s assessment seems to be that alleviating anxieties regarding the “Iranian nuclear threat” would enable the West to concentrate more on Russia, while an Iran that remains under Western sanctions will also be more willing to support Russia in its contest with the West, including in Ukraine.
Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula
Despite longtime and consistent support for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Russia has largely reevaluated its policy preferences and begun to pursue direct strategic cooperation with North Korea since 2022. In the second half of 2023, North Korea began providing artillery shells, mortars, and short-range ballistic missiles to Russia’s armed forces for use in Ukraine. Russia, having once supported successive UNSC resolutions condemning and restricting North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile advances, has now started openly courting Pyongyang as a strategic partner. In September 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov openly dismissed the relevance of those resolutions, noting that they had been passed in a different geopolitical climate.
The strategic contours of Russia–North Korea ties in early 2024 better resemble those observed during the Cold War, when Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, sought Soviet support in areas ranging from conventional military modernization to nuclear technology. While Moscow may not be directly enabling qualitative improvements to North Korean nuclear weapons, the publicly stated willingness to assist Pyongyang with space launch technologies points to a fundamentally new approach. As long as Russia views a nuclear-armed North Korea as an essential partner in sustaining offensive operations in Ukraine and as a potential strategic asset in broader geopolitical confrontations with the United States and the West, the prospects for a common U.S.-Russia approach on nonproliferation for the Korean Peninsula are dim. Besides this, Moscow likely assesses that the prospects of North Korea relinquishing its nuclear arms are low, if not zero. This renders cooperation with the United States on seeking the intractable goal of denuclearization less appealing, too.
Since the first North Korean nuclear crisis in the early 1990s, Russia and the United States have been largely aligned in pursuing the common goal of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. While Russia kept a generally cordial relationship of engagement with Pyongyang in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow consistently maintained that North Korean nuclear proliferation could not be tolerated. Until 2018, Russia supported successive UNSC resolutions seeking to apply economic pressure on North Korea; it also participated actively in various multilateral negotiations with North Korea.
But by the final months of 2019, Moscow openly came to support a slackening of sanctions pressure on Pyongyang. Russia assessed that the failure of the 2019 U.S.–North Korea summit meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, was caused by Washington’s unwillingness to moot sanctions relief in exchange for concrete—if incomplete—nuclear concessions by Pyongyang. In other words, Moscow came to see Washington as the obdurate party to blame for the failure of diplomacy, not Pyongyang.
Given the enduring war in Ukraine, North Korea’s continued disinterest in resuming diplomacy with the United States, and Pyongyang’s expanding strategic cooperation with Russia, a realignment between Washington and Moscow on denuclearization is unlikely. Moreover, sustained cooperation between Russia and North Korea could accelerate Pyongyang’s military modernization efforts, which could in turn increase escalation risks on the Korean Peninsula.
U.S. policymakers should not assume, however, that Russian support for North Korea will be unlimited in the coming years. As with many facets of Russian state policy since February 2022, the rapprochement with Pyongyang seems driven mostly by short-term interests in the context of the war in Ukraine—primarily its need for munitions to sustain the ongoing battle of attrition. While Russia and North Korea’s long-term strategic convergence may prove durable, their shared interests today could diverge should both sides no longer see the current set of quid pro quos to be sustainable or equitable. Even as Moscow moves away from its traditional focus on nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula, Russia may continue to see an interest in averting a major conflict on the peninsula, which, in the worst case, could lead to nuclear use along its periphery. Even a serious crisis could precipitate the deployment of new U.S. military assets, including missile defense systems that Russia has previously opposed in Northeast Asia as in Europe. Kim Jong Un’s apparent turn toward greater confrontation with Seoul, while potentially in part a consequence of Russian support in the short term, could create the conditions for longer-term tensions between Pyongyang and Moscow.
The United States could feasibly aim to identify and exploit potential fissures between Russia and North Korea. However, the broader, long-term issues raised by Moscow’s ongoing expansion of cooperation with Pyongyang will make it far less tenable to treat North Korea as primarily a nonproliferation problem. Should a future U.S. administration seek to change its fundamental approach toward North Korea to one that prioritizes the reduction of the risk of nuclear war, Washington’s approach may not receive active Russian support, but it is also unlikely to meet significant Russian intransigence.
Sustaining Nonproliferation and Nuclear Energy Governance
Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been on the defensive in international meetings—for example, blocking attempts to call out its violations of Ukrainian sovereignty and dangerous occupation of nuclear facilities. Russia impeded the finalization of an outcome document at the August 2022 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) precisely over the Ukraine issue. A Russian representative told that gathering that even the most neutral text on the situation in Ukraine is contentious and therefore “killing the possibility of reaching consensus.” At subsequent NPT meetings in the summer of 2023, Russia again gummed up diplomacy, leading longtime NPT participant William Potter to observe that it is striking “how traditional nonproliferation cooperation between Washington and Moscow, including the NPT review process, is now nonexistent.”
Another theme of Russian diplomacy also emerged following the Ukraine invasion: the contention that the biggest nonproliferation threat stems from Washington’s double standards, not Moscow’s actions. Moscow’s argument—with some justification—is that the United States bends or violates the rules when it sees an opportunity, especially to create favorable treatment for its allies. In several forums, Russia and China made a frontal assault against the U.S.-UK-Australia agreement (AUKUS) under which Australia will receive nuclear-powered submarines fueled by highly enriched uranium. Russia also marshaled this argument in defending its decision to forward deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, in violation of the agreements about the nonnuclear status of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine that were made at the time of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Moscow asserts that placing its nuclear weapons in Belarus does not violate the NPT because the United States is similarly placing nuclear weapons in some NATO states, even though the U.S. deployment of these weapons pre-dates the completion of the NPT. Russia also justified its de-ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in October 2023 as necessary to “mirror” the United States’ actions. This emphasis on parity with the United States now appears to permeate Russia’s broader decisionmaking on nuclear matters.
Russian behavior on nuclear energy affairs in forums other than NPT and IAEA meetings has been more pragmatic. Specifically, Russia has not obstructed business in the meetings of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an export control policy-setting body comprised of nuclear technology holders. Russian delegations at the NSG tend to be staffed by officials from Rosatom, the state nuclear power corporation, rather than diplomats from the foreign ministry. In contrast to other forums and other issues, Russia’s pragmatism on nuclear energy trade probably reflects a calculus that compartmentalizing cooperation is useful to protect the country’s long-term nuclear business interests.
Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state corporation Rosatom had been both a competitor and a cooperation partner for Western nuclear firms. Notably, Orano, Europe’s most important nuclear materials vendor, in 2018 forged a partnership agreement with Rosatom. Under Putin, Rosatom has evolved into not only a commercial nuclear vendor but also an apparent instrument of Russian geopolitical ambitions. In Ukraine, after Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Putin ordered Rosatom to take charge of it. Yet Russia’s war exposed Western vendors’ ambivalence toward Rosatom. Western governments have largely avoided sanctioning Rosatom, because their countries’ utilities and industries are reliant upon Russian enriched uranium fuel and, potentially, replacement parts to keep their nuclear power plants operating.
In the long term, many global nuclear firms will likely aim to preserve opportunities to benefit from Russia’s opening of new nuclear power markets worldwide. This may encourage interest among the Western nuclear industry for a return to a certain level of “commercial coexistence” or “business as usual” with Russia’s nuclear industry. (On the other hand, Western nuclear fuel suppliers such as Urenco appear to favor sanctions against Rosatom in order to support growth in their supply contracts.) In principle, such interests might aid renewal of U.S. and Western nuclear governance diplomacy with Russia, especially to enable the broader use of nuclear reactors. However, such hopes may run aground if Russia aims to bring into Moscow’s orbit “nuclear newcomer” states by offering them reactor deals with lesser requirements on nuclear safety, oversight, transparency, and nonproliferation. Russia may also anticipate that its nuclear salesmanship among developing countries will help gain support for its efforts to challenge positions taken by the United States and its allies on safeguards and other nonproliferation-related issues.
Can Nuclear Cooperation Be Resurrected?
Across the issues surveyed here, it is evident that any potential efforts by Washington or Moscow to compartmentalize nonproliferation cooperation have been subsumed by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Cooperation was clearly fraying before 2022, but now the ripping is audible in most multilateral nuclear nonproliferation meetings. For the last few decades, the United States and Russia were able to insulate nonproliferation cooperation from their growing strategic divergence, but this is now no longer the case. In support of its geopolitical contest with the United States and its need for war materiel, Russia prioritizes relations with Iran and North Korea over nonproliferation principles.
For the foreseeable future, cooperation on nonproliferation will be linked to broader geopolitical issues. In a postwar environment, it is plausible that U.S. and Russian interests on some nonproliferation issues could again intersect. But issues with Iran and North Korea are unlikely to be among them. Russia’s near-term needs from both states will decline after the war, but its willingness to facilitate diplomacy or otherwise influence either state according to U.S. aims—especially through coercive measures—is likely to remain limited.
It is also plausible that Russian attitudes toward the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran may have shifted. Though contrary to Russian official positions, there are now prominent voices in Moscow, seemingly with backing from Russian security agencies, who argue that the risks of Iran acquiring the bomb are outweighed by the long-term benefits of sustaining a close relationship and preventing Tehran from moving toward the West. Although it is unlikely that Russia directly supports Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Moscow seems intent on avoiding previous policies on Iran’s nuclear program that damaged ties to Tehran. Whether or not Moscow would intervene to counter possible U.S. or Israeli counterproliferation actions to prevent Iranian weaponization is a potentially significant hypothetical. Similarly, on the basis of current evidence, it is hard to predict how Russian officials would evaluate their interests in other plausible proliferation cases, such as South Korea or Saudi Arabia. Perhaps Russia’s position would depend on the U.S. response and be purposefully contrary as a means of seeking geopolitical advantage. It is also conceivable that Washington and Moscow might react similarly, even if for different reasons and not in concert.
On nuclear energy trade, greater cooperation may be possible, especially if there is a modus vivendi to unblock NPT meetings. On nuclear governance more broadly, the crux of the issue is whether nonproliferation has any serious weight or priority in a world in which relations between the United States and Russia are persistently acrimonious. Moreover, the marginalization of the NPT raises the question of whether Washington and Moscow can surmount their discord to uphold a unified stance against the nuclear ambitions of would-be proliferators. States with nuclear weapons aspirations may perceive contentious U.S.-Russia dynamics as an opening and aim to play one off the other or leverage their potential nuclear capability as a bargaining chip to extract concessions. In sum, U.S.-Russia nonproliferation cooperation will be heavily circumscribed for the foreseeable future, unless there is a major scrambling of policies and interests deriving from political upheaval in either Washington or Moscow.