I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture. Given just how much Russia has invested into Elite capture you know they will set everything in their power to make the west suck up their Gas deliveries.
I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture.
That's not how things work.
You need to have some actual evidence for your pet theory of what happened. You don't just get to believe it (or assign it high likelihood of being true) because it sounds like a nifty narrative, and seems to connect some dots for you.
Meanwhile while the commenter above you is saying, being far from "handwavy", is entirely obvious to anyone with knowledge with knowledge of that country at the time. Anti-nuclear sentiment was everywhere, and it wasn't irrational, just misinformed against the backdrop of what we know today.
Soviet influence operations were ridiculously ineffective at the time (the movement goes back to the 70s-80s) and there's scant evidence of them having been able to influence much of anything in the West (even on issues they were greatly interested in and put out tons of propaganda about, the set of which never included nuclear power as a topic).
No dependency on Russian gas, no money.