By EUvsDisinfo
On 3 March, the third anniversary of the signing of Moldova’s formal application to join the European Union, Moldovan President Maia Sandu received the President of the European Council, António Costa, for an official visit in Chisinau as part of the country’s path towards the EU.
While this meeting and the nascent spring offered a positive perspective, the wintertime energy drama keeps casting a shadow over both banks of the Nistru river.
With the impact of the month-long gas cut by Russian Gazprom being reduced, the Kremlin is fully engaged in a blame game for its attempt to apply pressure on the Moldovan government and President Maia Sandu. A number of interesting lessons can be observed.
Moldova remains in the Kremlin’s crosshairs
Moldova has resisted several Russian attempts to derail its closer orientation towards the EU, from coup attempts and economic pressure to elections interference, as we have analysed here, here and here.
Moldova is expected to hold parliament elections at the latest by October this year, so the recent gas crisis was just the most recent attempt to sabotage Moldova’s progress towards joining the EU and undermine the parliamentary majority ahead of the elections.
What happened? The Russian Gazprom had stopped the delivery of gas to the Transnistrian region of Moldova on 1 January 2025, claiming alleged ‘unpaid historical debts’ as the reason. Due to this Moscow-engineered crisis, the inhabitants of the left bank were left without heating in the winter and faced rolling black-outs, which also put electricity generation for the wider Moldova in danger.
Russian energy exports weaponised again
Gazprom operates as an extension of the Russian authorities which are known for using gas and energy exports as a political instrument and cut-offs as coercive weapons. Almost all neighbours have experienced this: Belarus several times, as well as Germany and European consumers in May 2022, as Russia tried to apply pressure for the lifting of sanctions.
Gazprom delivered ‘free’ or low-priced gas to the Transnistrian region for more than 30 years. The gas was used to generate electricity, to power local heavy industry, and for households, who paid a symbolic price. No one knows where the profits went, because the leadership in Tiraspol did not pay anything to Gazprom. Over the years, the de facto Transnistrian authorities reportedly accumulated over USD 11 billion in debts. There can be only one reason: this delivery kept the region dependent on Russia.
Moscow’s attempt to shift blame
Despite a valid contract with Moldovagaz obliging Gazprom to deliver the agreed amount of gas to the Moldovan border, Moscow did not bother to explore other ways of delivering gas to Transnistrian region. Alternative options certainly existed.
Instead, Moscow and its Transnistrian local proxies claimed that the crisis was entirely the fault of the West and an attempt to weaken Russian influence in the region. According to the Kremlin, if the Moldovan government in Chisinau wanted to help the region, it should have negotiated the resumption of supplies with Russia and Ukraine.
Russian myths:
News outlets in on the left bank controlled by the de-facto authorities repeated Kremlin narratives. For almost 30 years, the region had very little access to independent sources of information other than Russian and local Transnistrian controlled ones while Moldovan and Western media channels were actively blocked until recently.
“Brink of collapse”: Russian sources frequently claim Transnistrian region is on the brink of collapse, and that Moldova and Ukraine are conspiring to create a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ there. Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed the region owes its very survival to Russia and described the situation as a ‘real crisis’ while Russian MFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova painted Russia as the region’s saviour, organising supplies via alternative routes, and working on long-term solutions. However, these solutions did not materialise – at least not in the way that Tiraspol would have hoped for.
“Chaos awaiting”: Moldova’s home-grown pro-Kremlin lobby has been busy too, and Russian state-controlled and pro-Kremlin outlets have regurgitated its false claims. Former President Igor Dodon claimed that by depriving Transnistrian region of electricity and gas, ‘someone wants to see this whole situation end in violence’.
Smear President Sandu…: Pro-Kremlin outlets have long tried to use misogyny to smear President Maia Sandu as a hysterical and unstable woman, now claiming she flew into a rage and demanded that force be used to secure the Cuciurgan power station which is located on the left bank and is supplying electricity to all of Moldova.
…with conspiracy theories: The Russian state-owned outlet Sputnik quoted Russia’s foreign intelligence service, SVR, advancing a conspiracy theory suggesting that President Maia Sandu had discussed with parliament the development of a military operation to re-establish control over the left bank, to remove the Russian military presence there, and to ‘take revenge’. It is noteworthy that Russia now finds it opportune to let the SVR speak directly.
‘Loss of sovereignty’: Socialist MP Bogdan Tirdea called Sandu a ‘pawn in a big, geopolitical game’ orchestrated by Washington with the aim of squeezing all its rivals out of the European gas market and monopolise it completely.
The Kremlin solution: gas from Europe, loans from Russia
In mid-January, after two weeks without gas, the Tiraspol leaders went to Moscow. Gazprom announced that it would deliver so-called humanitarian gas to the region. The initial solutions proposed by Moscow suggested murky, non-transparent schemes involving sanctioned actors in contravention of Moldovan law, proving once again that instead of solutions, Russia was looking for leverage and creating a dilemma for the Moldovan government.
At the end of January, EU offered EUR 20 million in emergency aid to the Moldovan government to prevent a humanitarian crisis in the Transnistrian region. For two days, the leaders in Tiraspol and Moscow had no reaction to a solution that would end a month of freezing and blackouts in the region. Their propaganda apparatus had no messages prepared for this situation and in the end, Tiraspol’s de-facto leaders accepted the help, but publicly thanked the EU and… Russia. According to them, the latter showed ‘interest in finding a solution’ to the crisis.
EU helps for the long perspective
The EU has also offered another EUR 60 million for the Moldovan citizens on the left bank, subject to conditions. This time, Tiraspol has to implement several steps. This includes issues such as human rights in the region, the release of several illegal detainees, the lifting of the de-facto information blockade by including the Moldovan public broadcaster in the main Transnistrian cable operator’s network and gradually increase energy tariffs.
The offer indeed forced Moscow to react: it decided to deliver gas via the European market for a monthly value of USD 120 million, which is a costly ticket.
No return to status quo
What a paradoxical situation – despite all the talk about benefits from the long-term and stable flow of cheap Russian gas, Russia currently prefers to pay for more expensive gas bought on the European market and using short-term contracts than to deliver its own. Even using common sense is enough to see that Moldova’s stability and the wellbeing of its population on both banks of the Nistru river is not what Moscow seeks.
The Russian solution means uncertainty, possible interruptions whenever they would benefit the Kremlin’s hybrid operations, and a lot of propaganda.
By EUvsDisinfo
