Moldova declares state of emergency due to risk of Russian gas supply cutoff

(Patria) - The Parliament of Moldova voted after midnight to introduce a national state of emergency for 60 days starting December 16 due to the expected cutoff of Russian gas supply from January 1.

Fifty-six members in the 101-seat chamber supported the measure in a vote shortly after midnight following Prime Minister Dorin Recean’s call for approval to ensure that the Moldovan separatist region of Transnistria secures the necessary gas, Reuters reported.

It was a vote, he said, to end the “gas blackmail” from Moscow. The declaration of a state of emergency allows the government to react quickly and curb energy exports.

Moldova receives Russian natural gas through Ukraine, which has said it will not extend its transit contract with Russian gas giant Gazprom. The contract expires on December 31.
Recean said Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to leave the population of Transnistria without gas and electricity and hold them hostage. Moscow is doing this to destabilize the situation in Moldova.”

It is up to Parliament, Recean said, to approve the state of emergency so that “this winter must be the last in the country’s history when we can be subject to energy blackmail.”

Failure to secure gas for Transnistria, the government said in a statement, “will lead to a humanitarian crisis... and also create risks for the stability of Moldova’s electricity sector.”

Moldova receives about two billion cubic meters of gas annually from Russia. Since 2022, Transnistria and the central government have agreed that all Russian gas received by Moldova flows to Transnistria.

Transnistria has a power plant running on Russian gas that is a vital backbone of the breakaway region’s economy, and it also supplies most of the energy for government-controlled areas of Moldova. Transnistria, which has no international recognition, declared its own economic state of emergency on Tuesday.

Recean said the issue of transit through Ukraine is an “artificial problem” because Russian gas can move through other routes. Moldova has said an alternative route to Transnistria could be the delivery of Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline to Turkey, and then through Bulgaria and Romania.

Deliveries could, however, be called into question because Gazprom has linked the continuation of deliveries via alternative routes in negotiations to its demands for Moldova to pay its debt for previous deliveries, which according to Russian calculations amounts to $709 million.