Yuri Kobzar18:27, 20.03.25

The US President has lost interest in Ukrainian mineral resources and now has a new obsession – Ukrainian nuclear energy.

This week, US President Donald Trump and his underlings began floating a strange new idea: America could take control of Ukrainian nuclear power plants to protect them from Russian strikes. The proposal is likely to meet with considerable resistance from Ukraine, The New York Times reports .

The publication notes that this statement fits into the concept previously voiced by the White House that the US economic presence in Ukraine is supposedly the best guarantee of security. It would seem that this would somehow restrain the Russians from a new attack on Ukraine. Such argumentation, for example, was applied to the agreement on Ukrainian minerals, which, it seems, have recently ceased to interest Trump.

Providing readers with background information about Ukrainian nuclear power plants, the author of the publication notes that Russia has never tried to destroy them, although it has actively fired missiles at coal, gas and hydroelectric power plants.

“It has avoided striking nuclear facilities that could trigger a radiation disaster. Against this backdrop, the Ukrainian government has initiated plans to build new nuclear reactors, arguing that this is the only viable solution to ensure long-term energy security,” the NYT writes.

The author of the publication believes that American economic interest may lie specifically in assistance with the construction of new power units. Even before the war, the American nuclear company Westinghouse established cooperation with the Ukrainian Energoatom. In particular, the Americans helped modernize the Zaporizhzhya NPP, and they also provided it with nuclear fuel.

Olga Kosharnaya, a Ukrainian nuclear safety expert, said Russia’s takeover of Zaporizhzhya NPP had Westinghouse worried that the occupiers could steal their intellectual property – the technology implemented at the Ukrainian plant.

Adrian Prokip, an energy expert at the Kennan Institute in the US, said Westinghouse would “certainly benefit” from the return of Zaporizhzhya NPP to Ukrainian hands.

However, there are no signs that the Ukrainians are ready to hand over their nuclear power plants to the Americans. Ukrainian legislation directly prohibits their privatization, and an attempt to change this law would cause a political scandal.

“I expect this idea to have a lot of resistance in Ukraine. On both sides of the political spectrum,” said former MP Viktoria Voitsitska, who was a member of the parliamentary committee on energy issues in the previous Verkhovna Rada.

(c)UNIAN 2025