Since Ukraine terminated its transit agreement, Russian gas supplies to Moldova’s Transnistria region have been suspended, leaving businesses idle and citizens fighting to stay warm. Officials warn that if the situations continues, irreparable harm could result.
According to an official, all industrial businesses have been forced to close save for food producers as a result of the Russian gas supply being cut off to Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region.
Wednesday’s cutoff of Russian gas supplies to central and eastern Europe via Ukraine has been a hard and immediate blow to the roughly 450,000-person, primarily Russian-speaking region that broke away from Moldova in the 1990s as the Soviet Union fell apart.
According to Sergei Obolonik, the region’s first deputy prime minister, “all industrial enterprises are idle, with the exception of those engaged in food production – that is, directly ensuring food security for Transnistria”, when speaking on a local news channel Thursday.
“It’s too soon to predict how things will turn out . . . The issue is so widespread that, if it is not fixed for a long time, irrevocable changes will have already occurred, namely, businesses will no longer be able to launch”.
Despite almost three years of war, Ukraine had permitted Russia to continue pumping gas across its territory, earning up to $1 billion annually in transit fees. However, Kiev declined to extend a five-year agreement that ended on Wednesday.
Slovakia and Austria, two European gas consumers, had secured backup supplies in anticipation of the cutoff. However, Transnistria has been crippled despite its connections to Moscow and the 1,500 Russian troops stationed there.
Staying Warm
Families were urged to stay warm by huddled in one room, using electric heaters, and covering windows with blankets or curtains when the local energy company cut off heating and hot water to homes on Wednesday.
According to Vadim Krasnoselsky, the leader of Transnistria, the region has gas reserves that could probably last for ten days in the north and twice as long in the south, with minimal use.
According to him, households should be able to have electricity in January and February as the primary power plant has converted from gas to coal.
Transnistria, including the power plant that supplied electricity to the entire country of Moldova, a country of 2.5 million people that aspires to join the European Union, has been receiving roughly 2 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Russia.
Conflicts over gas payments and strained ties with Russia have long existed in Moldova. The former Soviet state is attempting to import over 60% of its energy needs from neighboring Romania and reduce its energy consumption by at least a third.
The termination of Russian gas transit has been referred to as “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has called on the US to increase gas supplies to Europe.
Europe has reduced its reliance on Russian energy since Moscow launched a military campaign in Ukraine and increased imports from alternative sources, such as LNG from the US and Qatar and piped gas from Norway.
Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, claimed in a statement on Thursday that the US benefited economically from Europe’s loss of Russian gas.
“Responsibility for the cessation of Russian gas supplies lies entirely with the United States, the puppet Kiev regime, as well as the authorities of European states that sacrificed the wellbeing of their citizens for the sake of providing financial support for the American economy”, she stated.
