Just take the gas – POLITICO

Hipper was responding to a question from POLITICO, which this week published leaked correspondence revealing that the pro-Kremlin leadership of the unrecognized state, based in the city of Tiraspol, refused Moldovan offers to provide gas from the European market and was turning down offers of humanitarian aid.

“We encourage Tiraspol to cooperate with Chișinău to address the situation in the interests of the local population,” said Hipper.

Speaking in a closed-door call with journalists and top administration officials on Monday, Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean accused Moscow of confecting the standoff. “This is a security crisis that Russia, through weaponization of energy, is trying to induce in the region,” he said.

“They halted the gas supply to the region that they control, including through the fact that they have illegally stationed military troops there and they do not allow anyone to help the region,” Recean said.

Transnistria has remained de facto autonomous since a war between the breakaway region and Moldova following the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and plays host to more than a thousand Russian troops.

After the agreement allowing the transit of Russian gas into Europe via Ukraine ended on Jan. 1, the Moldovan government says Moscow has refused to export natural gas to Transnistria through available alternative routes, as part of a bid to inflame tensions ahead of critical parliamentary elections later this year.