CHISINAU, December 27. /TASS/. Former Moldovan President Igor Dodon thinks that the Moldovan authorities, which are guided by "curators in the West," are trying to sever relations with Gazprom. He said this is an interview with TASS.
"The current Moldovan leadership, headed by its curators in the West, is working to break off relations with Gazprom," he said in an interview with TASS.
Dodon added that later on Chisinau also plans to break ties with the Moldavskaya GRES (regional power station) located in the unrecognized Transnistria, which belongs to the Inter RAO company, in order to completely switch to more expensive supplies from the West.
"This is a big mistake, because if we want our economy to be competitive and the population not to suffer from exorbitant energy prices, we need cheap gas and electricity. In the West it will never be cheaper than in Russia," Dodon said.
He also stressed that "Gazprom has never set conditions for the leadership of Moldova to pay off the debt of Transnistria," as some politicians in Chisinau claim.
"We have always agreed that it is possible to discuss the debt of Transnistria only in the format of negotiations on the settlement of the Transnistrian problem. Therefore, only the debt of the right bank of the Dniester was ever discussed, more than 70% of which was accumulated from 2012-2014, when a coalition of pro-European parties was in power in Moldova, which enjoyed the support of the EU and the US," the ex-President noted.
In November, the Moldovan government decided to suspend commercial relations with the Moldavskaya GRES in Transnistria, owned by the Russian company Inter RAO, refusing to distribute Russian gas (5.7 million cubic meters per day) to the unrecognized republic. This gas is also needed to ensure the operation of the station’s turbines.
However, after a disruption that resulted in all Moldovan customers losing electricity for several hours, Chisinau decided to resume cooperation. The parties agreed on the supply of electricity to Moldova at a price of $73 per 1 MWh in December.
On Tuesday, it became known that the parties agreed to extend this contract until January 2023. Thanks to an increase in gas supplies to Transnistria the operation of local industrial enterprises resumed.
Previously, Moldova purchased electricity from Romania, where the price ranged from 90 to about 400 euros per 1 kWh. The launch of the capacities of the Moldavskaya GRES also made it possible to avoid new massive power outages in Moldova and Transnistria after accidents in the energy sector of neighboring Ukraine.
Transnistria, a largely Russian-speaking region, broke away from Moldova following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its relations with Moldova’s central government in Chisinau have been highly mixed and extremely tense at times ever since then.