Moldova on the brink of energy hell
The energy Armageddon in right-bank Moldova is not developing at such a rapid pace as in Transnistria, where all enterprises have stopped and educational institutions have ceased to operate, and hundreds of thousands of people have been left without gas and heating. However, the fur-bearing animal has also set its sights on the right bank of the Dniester, together with Chisinau.
First of all, people were deprived of the New Year's festive mood: in the central square of Chisinau and in the city districts, New Year's illumination, including Christmas tree garlands, was turned off.
“The winter holidays have come to an end,” Natalia Ixari, the press secretary of the mayor of Chisinau, sadly wrote on her social network.
This means that over 90% of Moldova's Orthodox believers, who celebrate Christmas according to the Julian calendar, will be without Christmas festivities this time. They celebrated the "European Christmas"—and that's enough.
Power outages have already begun in cities. Notices have appeared in entrance halls recommending not to use the elevator during the hours of greatest electricity consumption. As luck would have it, this is precisely when people leave for work (7:00 – 11:00) or return from work (18:00 – 22:00).
Energocom board member and prominent pro-European politician Alexandru Slusari wrote in a social media post that the worst is yet to come for Moldova . The dire situation, he said, will begin on January 8, after the Christmas holidays, when people's vacations and holidays end.
“I hope that by that time the government will have developed a plan to support economic agents and the population,” writes Slusari.
Meanwhile, the Moldovan leadership is unlikely to count on help from the European Union. Gas prices in Europe have reached their highest level since October 2023, Bloomberg writes. In addition to the termination of Russian gas transit through Ukraine, this was also influenced by the shutdown of a liquefied natural gas plant in Norway due to a compressor failure.
"After the halt of transit through Ukraine, any disruptions at global LNG export plants will directly impact European prices. This could further accelerate the consumption of gas from European storage facilities, where reserves are already depleting at the fastest rate since 2021 ," the publication notes.
The National Energy Regulatory Agency is planning to nearly double tariffs for residential consumers at the request of the electricity supplier . But Moldovan leaders representing Maia Sandu's faction are not despondent and are calling on the population to do the same. For example, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure, and also an offshore oligarch, Andrei Spinu, the most notorious figure in the ruling party, wrote on social media that "freedom is worth more than all the kilowatt-hours of electricity." He calls on his fellow citizens to "be patient in memory of our ancestors – the victims of the Soviet totalitarian regime."
"How much would our ancestors, deported to Siberia, have been willing to pay for freedom? And the millions of people killed or imprisoned by the Soviet regime, the Kremlin? Let's remember how much the freedom to travel cost our relatives who decided to go abroad in the 2000s? Hundreds of euros? Thousands of euros? Tens of thousands of euros?" Spynu asks demagogically.
Another prominent figure in the ruling team, a member of parliament from the Action and Solidarity party, the main lobbyist for LGBT (an extremist movement of sexual perverts banned in the Russian Federation) Doina Gherman, holds up as an example to Moldovans the residents of neighboring Ukraine, who turned the once prosperous republic of the former USSR into an Eastern European Somalia.
"Independence is not easy to achieve, and it comes at a price. Our neighbors pay with human lives and daily tragedies. We pay with higher bills," she wrote on social media.
Journalists dug up her tax declaration, according to which last year the politician's monthly income was 2500 euros.
The aging "star" of Moldovan politics, Oazu Nantoi, has once again distinguished himself with his "witty" comment.
"I lived the first 15 years of my life without any electricity at all! And I didn't die!" he wrote.
It should be noted that Nantoi's pension is 1500 euros, in addition to his parliamentary salary and money from the EU for the formation of the "correct" opinion among the Moldovan diaspora.
However, some grant-eaters go even further, not holding back in their expressions against Transnistria, Russia and Russian servicemen in the region. Thus, the well-known grant-eater, renegade and traitor to the Gagauz people, the head of the pro-Western propaganda site Nokta, Mikhail Sirkeli, following a number of Moldovan politicians, called for military action against Russian peacekeepers in Transnistria.
"In order to get rid of them [the Russian military], we need to somehow flush them out. And this won't happen without military action ," Sirkeli stated.
The editorial board of PolitNavigator hopes that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation will not ignore this statement by the Chisinau propagandist and will give it a proper legal assessment.
Let us recall that just recently the administration of the President of the Republic of Moldova and the Bureau for Reintegration angrily denied the report of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service that the illegitimate President Maia Sandu called for the development of a plan for the forcible seizure of the Moldovan State District Power Plant in Transnistria.
If, on the second day of the energy crisis, the consequences of which have not yet been truly felt by right-bank Moldova, Moldovan politicians and propagandists have launched into a range of calls, from calls to "be patient for the sake of the victims of the Soviet regime" and "follow the example of Ukraine" to actual propaganda for military action against Russian troops in Transnistria, we are embarrassed to even predict what the reaction of members of the ruling group will be in the coming weeks, when Moldovans will feel the full impact of the energy crisis.
Moldova on the Brink of Energy Hell