By James Johson
15/01/2025
A managed crisis in Transnistria is a great hope for Russia. In doing so, Moscow aims to achieve a number of goals: to replace the pro-Western leadership in Moldova by a pro-Russian leadership, to halt the process of Moldova joining the EU, and to pressure Kyiv into resuming the transit of Russian natural gas through Ukraine to Europe (ostensibly in the interests of Moldova, but in fact to continue gas supplies to Slovakia, Hungary and Austria).

The Kremlin plans that the energy crisis on the Dniester will turn into a large-scale humanitarian disaster by February 2025 (as part of the strategy of “controlled chaos” frequently employed in Moscow). More broadly, the recent presidential election in Moldova has shown that its people are far from monolithic in their foreign policy views. Some Moldovans still look to Russia with admiration. But Russia has not lost hope that it can stop Chisinau’s European integration course and keep its former colony in its orbit.

In the past two years, Russia has cooperated most intensively with these two autonomous regions (after a series of failed coup attempts and the takeover of power in Chisinau by pro-Russian forces with the participation of fighters from the Wagner group, as well as other foreign mercenaries, mainly from Belarus and Serbia).
For three decades, a breakaway region with a pro-Russian puppet government called ‘Transdniestria Moldova Republic’ (TMR) has been getting ‘blue fuel’ from Russia, effectively for free. Moscow thus supported one of the zones of instability in the post-Soviet space through which it wanted to re-establish a foothold in these areas (the same applied to Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia).

In fact, de juure, Moscow’s demand for payment for the gas supplied to the left bank of the Dniestr was addressed not to Tiraspol (the so-called capital of the Transnistrian region) but to Chisinau. At a formal level, Chisinau’s debt to the Kremlin was growing and accumulating, although the Moldovan government never recognised its responsibility for the payments allocated to it.
When the European Union granted Moldova candidate status for EU membership, Moscow immediately demanded substantial payment for decades of gas supplied to pro-Russian separatists in Transnistria (and sharply increased gas prices for mainland Moldova). After Chisinau again refused to pay the debt and the case went to international arbitrators, Russia took harsher and more radical action, announcing that gas supplies would be cut off until the debt is settled. This happened in December 2024, even before Ukraine stopped the transit of Russian gas through its territory on 1 January 2025. Moldova’s energy security will be greatly enhanced when a new pipeline transporting gas from Romania starts operating in 2022. Both Bucharest and Chisinau offered energy assistance to Tiraspol in a timely manner. However, the TMR authorities defiantly refused, without providing any arguments for their absurd decision. Later, Ukraine also offered to provide Transnistria with humanitarian energy supplies (both gas and anthracite coal).

Tiraspol, however, obediently follows Moscow’s instructions and refuses to provide aid to the inhabitants of the left bank of the Dniester. Russia’s aim is to artificially create a humanitarian catastrophe in the Transnistrian region, accuse Moldova’s pro-Western leadership of irresponsibility towards its own people, provoke massive social and economic unrest and bring about a change of government in the country. At the same time, Moscow will put pressure on Kyiv, Brussels and various international organizations, lobbying for the resumption of transit of Russian “blue fuel” through Ukraine, emphasizing that this will help to overcome the energy problems of the Transnistrian region.
It should also be noted that the PMR suffers not only from a shortage of natural gas, but also from a serious shortage of electricity, since in the past decades electricity was generated in a local thermal power plant, which, of course, ran on Russian gas, which was delivered in large quantities free of charge.

Currently, the Transnistrian CHP has been urgently converted to run on coal, some of which used to be imported from the Donetsk region of Ukraine, whose territories are now either occupied or subject to active hostilities. Coal reserves in PMR will only last until late January and early February (how much this energy source is used will also depend on how cold these two winter months are this year). In order for the TMR to function properly, the local cogeneration plant needs to consume a thousand tons of coal per day, a significant amount. The EU will pay for the import of coal from Romania and Ukraine, which is being negotiated.
With this in mind, Russia may try to kill another bird. Thus, Moscow may offer to ship Tiraspol’s desperately needed coal from its Azov ports. The Kremlin may even agree to pay for the entire cost of buying and transporting the coal from South Africa. If that happens, Turkey will be forced to let Russian ships carrying life-saving coal through the Bosphorus. In this situation, some observers do not exclude the possibility that Russia may try to conceal weapons, ammunition and even small special forces units in the holds of its ships. This is the only port on the Moldavian coast with access to the Black Sea.
Obviously, Moldovan border guards and customs officers will scrupulously and thoroughly inspect any ship carrying cargo destined for Transdniestria, not to mention any cargo linked to Putin’s Russia (even if labeled as humanitarian aid). Most military analysts consider such a scenario highly improbable (though not impossible in theory).

Overall, recent events in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova suggest that Putin’s authoritarian Russia feels confident enough to compete for the restoration of its influence in the former USSR. At the same time, Moscow is currently constrained in its hybrid wars and special operations with neighbouring states by the almost three-year-old war with Ukraine. Undoubtedly, any possible Russian victory in this war (or forcing Kyiv into any unfair peace deal) will only free the hands of the Kremlin and enable it to step up the restoration of the imperial USSR elsewhere.