What the early February 2025 signals meant for Kyiv and Chisinau
A look back at two statements, from Ukraine's president and Moldova's prime minister, made in the first week of February 2025.
What did the first days of February 2025 reveal about the pressures on Ukraine and its neighbour Moldova? On 9 February 2025, two recent statements framed the question: one on peace talks, the other on energy.
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 genuine step towards ending the war. The condition mattered: his readiness was tied to talks that would lead to an end to the fighting, not to talks for their own sake.
Two days later, on 6 February 2025, Moldova's Prime Minister Dorin Recean called on the breakaway region of Transnistria to take steps to avoid a new gas crisis. The word "new" pointed back to a crisis already under way. Transnistria had stopped receiving Russian natural gas on 31 December 2024, when Russia's five-year gas transit deal with Ukraine expired. Heating, hot water and gas were completely cut off there, and energy tariffs rose sharply across Moldova. Some villages elsewhere in the country also lost gas. In Transnistria, three people died and several more were injured from carbon monoxide poisoning, and cases of hypothermia were reported.
Taken together, the statements show how closely the war and regional energy supply were connected. The expiry of a transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine had consequences well beyond the two countries, reaching a neighbouring state and a region outside its government's control. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy's remarks on direct talks showed that diplomacy was part of the wider picture.
By 9 February 2025 neither statement had produced a settlement. The offer of talks was conditional, and the Moldovan prime minister's appeal was aimed at avoiding a repeat of the winter's hardship.
