The chair of Moldova’s Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and European Integration Ina Coseru declared that their government is planning to retake Transnistria. This would break a truce established in 1992, after eastern Moldova did not agree with Chisinau’s plan to break away from Russia, and would require pushing Russian military troops out. Coseru, a delegate of “United for Ukraine” who recently returned from a meeting in Kiev, seems to be suggesting that a replay of Kiev’s muscling of the Donbass would be successful if Chisinau carried it out against Transnistria.
Transnistria, historically a provider of electricity to Moldova, based upon a Soviet-era hydroelectric dam and a Russian gas pipeline, was heavily industrialized, with steel and textile factories. Now, Kiev has choked off the deliveries from the gas pipeline, leaving the area more dependent upon hydroelectric.
Speaking to European Pravda website, she explained: “The key change is that Russia doesn’t supply them with gas through Ukraine anymore…. Because the Transnistrian budget, which enabled it to exist, was formed from several main sources, and the key source was electricity generated from ‘free’ Russian gas, which Transnistria used to sell to Moldova. Now they can’t sell it....” That is, Kiev has cut off their supply.
Coseru admitted: “We still have some energy dependency on Transnistria because the electricity we buy on the European market technically goes through the Transnistrian grid—that is how the grid was built in Soviet times—and they can switch off electricity for us. But we are building the Vulcănești-Chişinău interconnector to get rid of this dependency, and the first interconnector will be completed this year.” So, the “governmental proposal that we are currently discussing, and it’s called the ‘Re-integration Plan for the Transnistria Region,’” is moving forward.
