Moldova urged Transnistria to act on gas on 6 February 2025
A look back at the Moldovan prime minister's call on the breakaway region, and at Zelenskyy's remarks on talks with Putin two days earlier.
What did Chisinau want from Transnistria on 6 February 2025? Moldova's Prime Minister, Dorin Recean, called on the breakaway region to take steps to avoid a new gas crisis.
The appeal came amid the 2025 Moldovan energy crisis. Transnistria, an unrecognised breakaway region of Moldova, had stopped receiving natural gas from Russia on 31 December 2024, at 19:50 EET, after Russia's five-year gas transit deal with Ukraine expired. That set off a nationwide energy crisis. Heating, hot water and gas were completely cut off in Transnistria, while energy tariffs rose sharply and some villages in the rest of Moldova also lost gas supplies.
The human cost in Transnistria was serious: three people died and several more were injured through carbon monoxide poisoning, and cases of hypothermia were also reported.
Talk of negotiations in the region's wider war
Two days earlier, on 4 February 2025, Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan that he was ready for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin if they were a setup to end the war. The remark was reported as part of discussion of possible peace negotiations in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The two items were separate, but both fell within the regional fallout of the war and its effects on energy and diplomacy.
