Brussels has offered millions of euros and more links to its energy supplies as part of a yearslong process to get the country, one of Europe’s poorest nations, ready for EU membership.
Stopping payments to Transnistria would collapse the separatist state’s budget and leave hundreds of thousands of people there without incomes and basic services — a challenge that, for a country Moldova’s size, would be akin to the reunification of Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In recent years, Brussels has given Moldova tens of millions of euros to build infrastructure and cement its connection to European energy networks, offsetting the costs of buying supplies from elsewhere.
“Solving the energy issue with Transnistria would be a major step forward,” said Viola von Cramon-Taubadel, a German MEP and member of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
In March, its officials called on the Kremlin to “protect it against the pressure of Moldova,” claiming that the country was staging an economic blockade — despite the daily flow of goods and services that pass Russian checkpoints.
And while they sit atop one of Europe’s largest arsenals of weaponry and ammunition at the closely guarded Cobasna depot, it is widely believed to hold little else but decaying WWII-era equipment that hasn’t already been sold off or repurposed by the Russians.
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