More than 51,000 households have been left without gas and 1,500 apartment buildings have no heat in Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist enclave, authorities report.
Transnistria, a mainly Russian-speaking separatist region along the Ukrainian border, had received Russian gas via Ukraine for decades, using it to generate electricity.
But that gas was cut off along with flows to central and eastern Europe that stopped on New Year’s Day, after Kyiv refused to extend a transit deal.
The Transnistrian government said on Telegram that a total of 122 settlements had been cut from gas supplies as of Monday morning and only small amounts were being supplied to some apartments for cooking.
“There is not a single person in Transnistrian who is guilty of this situation – it’s all an external factor,” the president in the region’s administration, Vadim Krasnoselsky, said in a televised statement.
Gas piped over Ukraine has long been the main way Russia supported the separatist region, which still hosts 1,500 Russian soldiers.
Leave a Reply