Great explainer about #Moldova #Transnistria and #Gazprom from Polish OSW expert Kamil Całus - he’s probably the best informed person on this area I’ve been reading so far. All following text is translation from his post in Polish, which I’m not formatting as a quote for readability.

On 1 January 2025, supplies of Russian de facto free gas to Transnistria, a separatist territory formally within Moldova’s borders, were halted. This was the result of Kyiv’s failure to renew its contract for the transit of this gas through Ukrainian territory, which expires at the end of 2024. At the same time, Russia refused to send gas via an alternative route, using the Turkstream and Trans-Balkan pipelines, on the condition that Moldova must settle its alleged gas debt to Gazprom, which, according to the Russian side, amounts to USD 709 million.

The interruption of Russian gas supplies led to a serious energy and economic crisis in Transnistria, inhabited by some 300,000 people.

Already on 1 January, all gas boiler plants in the region were switched off. Residential areas, as well as public institutions, including schools, kindergartens and hospitals, were deprived of gas heating. The main power plant in the ‘republic’, located in Dnestrovsc and owned by the Russian company Inter RAO Moldovan GRES, which has so far been powered by gas (its main fuel), has switched to coal, but the coal reserves in the vicinity of the plant are only expected to last for about 50 days. However, the alternative fuel plant cannot fully meet the region’s energy needs, especially as many residents now heat their homes with electric cookers and air conditioners. As a result, the local grid operator is forced to ration the available power, which involves temporary power cuts (for eight hours a day from 7 January). The suspension of gas supplies and the reduction of electricity production has also brought virtually all major industrial plants to a standstill.

Right-bank Moldova (i.e. excluding Transnistria) - despite no longer consuming Russian gas from 2022 onwards - is also affected by the suspension of gas transit through Ukrainian territory.

Until 1 January this year, as much as 80 per cent of the country’s electricity needs were met by Moldova’s GRES (the remaining 20 per cent was generated mainly by CHP plants in Chisinau and Belyce and renewable sources). However, this supply has now been stopped. This has forced the authorities in Chisinau to import at least twice as much expensive electricity from Romania and (to a lesser extent) Ukraine. This in turn has led to an increase (as of 3 January) in electricity tariffs of around 75%. Although, as a rule, imports cover the electricity needs of right-bank Moldova, in exceptional situations (e.g. in the event of large consumption surges or the interruption of energy supplies from Ukraine due to Russian bombing) temporary power cuts are possible.

There is no doubt that Russia has consciously created and is interested in aggravating the current crisis, hoping to undermine the popularity of the ruling pro-Western Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) in Chişinău through this.

This is particularly important in the context of Moldova’s parliamentary elections scheduled for the summer or early autumn. Although Moscow could have maintained gas supplies to Transnistria via an alternative route, it chose not to do so. Russia realised that demanding payment of Moldova’s unrecognised debt to Gazprom (according to an independent audit commissioned by the Moldovan authorities in 2023, it is not US$709 million but only US$8.6 million) and conditioning further supplies to Transnistria on it could not be accepted by Chisinau. The move was intended to allow the Kremlin to shift responsibility for the crisis (and thus also for the increase in electricity prices, potential power cuts and destabilisation of the situation in the region) onto the PAS government, which both the Russian side and the separatist Transnistrian authorities accuse of seeking to create a humanitarian and economic crisis in the para-state. In fact, it was Transnistria that rejected Chisinau’s offer of assistance to the region in recent days.

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