Moldova’s Transdniestria faces severe energy crisis after Russian gas shutoff – Firstpost

The closure of one of Russia’s last gas export routes to Europe is having its greatest impact on a small, predominantly Russian-speaking breakaway region of Moldova. This enclave, long reliant on Moscow for support and protection, now faces growing challenges as the energy supply dwindles.

Russian-backed separatists split from Moldova as the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, winning de facto independence for the region of some 450,000 people known as Transdniestria.

Ukraine on Wednesday halted Russian gas supplies to European customers through its pipeline network after a prewar transit deal expired at the end of 2024 and almost three years into Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.

Even as Russian troops and tanks moved into Ukraine in February 2022, Russian natural gas kept flowing through the country’s pipeline network — set up when Ukraine and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union — to Europe, under a five-year agreement.

The blow to Transdniestria was immediate. Households’ central heating and hot water were cut off on Wednesday. On Thursday, the government said all industrial enterprises apart from food producers had been forced to cease production.

At a summit in Brussels last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that Kyiv would not allow Moscow to use the transits to earn “additional billions … on our blood, on the lives of our citizens.” However, he briefly held open the possibility of the gas flows continuing if payments to Russia were withheld until the war ends.

Before the war, Russia supplied nearly 40% of the European Union’s pipeline natural gas. Gas flowed through four pipeline systems, one under the Baltic Sea, one through Belarus and Poland, one through Ukraine and one under the Black Sea through Turkey to Bulgaria.

After the war started, Russia cut off most supplies through the Baltic and Belarus-Poland pipelines, citing disputes over a demand for payment in rubles. The Baltic pipeline was blown up in an act of sabotage, but details of the attack remain murky.

The Russian cutoff caused an energy crisis in Europe. Germany had to shell out billions of euros to set up floating terminals to import liquefied natural gas that comes by ship, not by pipeline. Users cut back as prices soared. Norway and the United States filled the gap, becoming the two largest suppliers.

Europe viewed the Russian cutoff as energy blackmail and has outlined plans to completely eliminate Russian gas imports by 2027.

Russia’s share of the EU pipeline natural gas market dropped sharply to about 8% in 2023, according to data from the EU Commission. The Ukrainian transit route served EU members Austria and Slovakia, which long got the bulk of their natural gas from Russia but have recently scrambled to diversify supplies.