Rosatom as the Kremlin's Upcoming Leverage? Identifying Potential Pressure Points in the Nuclear Sector

Russia's relations with the EU have worsened over the past decade, and energy-related issues have been part of this regress. The attention has been mostly turned to natural gas and Gazprom, while Rosatom, another state-controlled energy giant, has been largely overlooked, although it may be the next vehicle fostering Russia's foreign policy goals. To find out whether this is the case, Hungary and Finland were chosen as case studies to determine whether Rosatom serves as leverage for Russian political influence and, if so, what the determining factors are. The research utilizes a disciplined interpretative case study design and the authors' own analytical model based on the strategic approach to energy policy to infer more general rules of behavior of the company and its home state under varying conditions.