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After more than three decades of de facto control over Moldova’s separatist Transnistria, the small region on the left bank of the Dniester River was left in the cold when Moscow halted gas supplies from January 1.
Before then, Russia’s energy giant Gazprom delivered gas to Moldova, including the separatist region of Transnistria, through Ukraine.
But Ukraine has said it will no longer allow the transit of Russian gas through its territory once its contract with Gazprom, which was valid until the start of 2025, expired.
Although Russia has the technical possibility to continue to send gas to Moldova through the trans-Balkan gas pipeline, via Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, Gazprom has refused to do so. Gazprom claims it has ended supplies because of Moldova’s huge debts, although Chisinau disputes this.
Analysts in Chisinau believe that Russia is using the expiry of the gas transit contract with Ukraine to put pressure on Moldova, cause public discontent and disrupt its route towards eventual European Union membership, away from Moscow’s influence.
“Gazprom … has a contractual obligation to deliver gas to the border with Moldova and it could use the alternative route through Turkey,” Sergiu Tofilat, an energy expert at WatchDog Community, a Chisinau-based think tank, told BIRN.
From 2006 until 2024, Russian gas deliveries to Moldova, including the Transnistrian region, were based on two agreements.
Under a contract signed with Gazprom in 2006, Moldovagaz supplied gas to Tiraspoltransgaz, the Transnistrian energy company, from 2007 to 2011. Both parties renewed the agreement annually until 2019 and they extended it from October 2021 until 2026.
A second contract, between Moldovagaz and Tiraspoltransgaz, signed in 2011, stipulated the conditions for delivering Russian gas to Transnistria.
The most recent contract signed between Gazprom and Moldovagaz, signed in October 2021, covering the next five years to 2026, obliged the Russian company to supply Moldova with 3.3 billion cubic meters a year.
Of this, 1.24 billion cubic meters would go to Moldova proper and 2.06 billion to Transnistria.
But, in December 2022, Gazprom only supplied Moldova with the gas intended for Transnistria – 2.06 billion, equal to 5.7 million cubic meters per day. This came after Moldova decided to stop buying gas from Russia, a political decision designed to coordinate with international efforts to stop funding the Russian war machine maintained by money from the sale of gas and oil.
While Moldova gave up its contractual share of the Russian gas, the remaining 2.06 billion cubic meters of gas was required to meet Transnistria’s internal needs and allow it to produce electricity, vital for its economy.
Moscow has long viewed Transnistria as a strategic outpost and base for possible military action in the Balkan region.
It illegally keeps about 1,600 soldiers in the region, divided into alleged peacekeeping troops and soldiers of the Operative Group of the Russian Army, OGRT.
This is subordinate to the Western Military District of the Russian Army based in St Petersburg, whose mission is to guard about 20,000 tons of ammunition left over from the Soviet period in the village of Cobasna.

Arguments over size of Moldova’s debts
On December 28, Gazprom informed Moldovagaz, its Moldovan subsidiary, that it would stop all gas supplies to Moldova on January 1, citing Moldova’s alleged refusal to pay its debts.
It noted Moldova’s habit of “regularly not fulfilling its payment obligations under the contract, which is a serious violation of its terms” as the reason for stopping deliveries.
“In this context, based on the provisions of the contract … Gazprom is introducing, starting at 08:00, on January 1, 2025, a limitation of natural gas supplies to Moldova,” a Gazprom press release said.
Gazprom referred to an alleged but unspecified debt of 709 million US dollars owed by Moldovagaz, which Gazprom said should be paid by the Moldovan authorities.
However, an independent international audit done in September 2023 set Moldovagaz’s debt to Gazprom at only eight million US dollars, which Chisinau was willing to pay immediately, but Moscow refused.
At the same time, the Transnistrian region already owes Gazprom a colossal 10.5 billion US dollars for gas consumed and never paid for over three decades.
Gazprom has tolerated this debt, which is transferred annually to the Russian company’s economic balance sheet.

Gas crisis hits secessionist regime
The separatist leader in Tiraspol, Vadim Krasnoselsky, announced on Wednesday that the region’s gas reserves currently stood at 13 million cubic metres.
Most of the region’s 350,000 or so inhabitants, about 220,000, hold Russian passports and are citizens of Russia.
In 1992, after a war in which Transnistrian forces were aided by the former Soviet Union’s 14th Army, the tiny region became de facto-independent from Chisinau – but in practice in Russia’s orbit.
Krasnoselsky insisted that the energy crisis was under control and that he would not allow the region to collapse.
But most economic institutions in Transnistria are already paralysed.
According to media reports, the end of gas supplies has led to the closure of most industries, except for food factories. Thousands of people have become unemployed overnight.
The MoldGres thermal power plant in the town of Cuciurgan has switched to coal-fired operation and, together with the Dubasari station, can cover electricity needs for at most 50 days.
“The crisis is so serious that there is no need to list which enterprises have stopped. All industrial enterprises are standing still except those that ensure Transnistria’s food security,” the separatist deputy prime minister of Transnistria, Serghei Obolonik, told the Novostipmr news agency.
“There are no energy resources for the industrial sector,” he added.

‘Squeezing Moldova’ ahead of elections
The authorities in Chisinau believe Russia wants to create a humanitarian crisis and trigger a domino effect in Moldova ahead of crucial parliamentary elections due this summer.
The idea is that high prices for energy will foment dissatisfaction among Moldovans who might otherwise vote for pro-European forces.
High energy prices will lead to further price rises of all goods and services and cut living standards.
“The 2025 parliamentary elections are seen as a last major opportunity for Moscow to reaffirm its influence in the Republic of Moldova and to slow down or even stop the pro-European orientation of the Moldovan state,” political analyst Anatol Taranu wrote in an editorial for IPN news agency.
The elections will determine whether Moldova stays on its European course, against a background of polarisation in society and scenarios in which pro-European forces might find themselves unable to form a governing coalition.
In tandem with stopping gas deliveries to Moldova, on December 23, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR, accused Moldova’s pro-Western President, Maia Sandu, of preparing a military operation in Transnistria.
According to the SVR, the alleged plan is for Moldovan military to take over the Cuciurgan power plant in Transnistria, which is supplied by Gazprom.
The SVR claimed that, after Sandu recently the Moldovan government’s energy security chiefs, the meeting ended with Sandu saying it was time to plan a military operation to establish control over Transnistria and “eliminate the Russian peacekeeping presence in the region”, the SVR said.
“No one can guarantee that the Moldovan president will not really try to start a real war in the region,” the SVR alleged, as quoted by the Russian TASS news agency.
Meanwhile the secessionist authorities in Transnistria are trying to shift attention from Moscow and seek culprits in Chisinau.
Tiraspol and the Transnistrian media insist that Gazprom stopped supplies to Transnistria because Moldovagaz failed to pay its debts. They also claim Chisinau did nothing to persuade Kyiv to extend the gas deal.
In response, Moldovagaz announced on Thursday that, together with the energy company Energocom, it is “willing to provide assistance, including technical and commercial support to Tiraspoltransgaz, in organising the purchase of natural gas on any European gas platform”.

Kremlin accused of ‘energy blackmail’
President Sandu has condemned the actions of the Russian authorities, accusing them of blackmail.
“The Kremlin is again using energy blackmail in an attempt to destabilize the situation, to influence the 2025 parliamentary elections and to undermine our European path,” she said on December 30.
Moldova is also being hit by the crisis. It was buying about 80 per cent of its electricity from the Moldgres thermal power plant in Transnistria at a below-market price. Now it has to secure energy from other sources.
Neighbour Romania has jumped to Moldova’s aid and is already supplying about 50 per cent of Moldova’s electricity needs.
Romania’s energy minister, Sebastian Burduja, said Russia has used energy as a weapon of blackmail for decades, always threatening to “turn off the tap”. He added that those who dream of “cheap Russian gas” should remember that freedom has a price.
“Without energy independence, there can be neither the freedom nor the security of a country … we have a moral duty to be with our brothers across the Prut [river in Moldova],” he said.
Moldova has secured another 30 per cent of the electricity it needs through the heating company Termoelectrica. Another 15 per cent comes from renewable energy and about 5 per cent from the CET Nord plant and the Costești hydro plant in the north.
On December 30, meanwhile, Prime Minister Dorin Recean called for a new look at laws on the nationalization of enterprises, to “get rid of any tools of blackmail”.
He was referencing the fact that Russia’s Gazprom owns about two-thirds of the shares in Moldovagaz, while Moldova’s Ministry of Economy owns about 35 per cent.
However, some experts see this energy crisis also as an opportunity for Moldova.
They see it as a chance for Moldova to reintegrate the Transnistrian region, which represents about 11 per cent of the country’s land surface, and to “close the Transnistrian file”.
“Every crisis also brings opportunities. In this case, stopping the delivery of ‘free’ gas to the left [bank] of the Dniester would pave the way for the reintegration of the two banks,” energy expert Sergiu Tofilat said.
“However, this project can become feasible only with the support of external partners, to maintain stability in the region, especially on the border with Ukraine,” he concluded.