It was quirk of Russia’s war in Ukraine: For nearly three years after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv continued to permit Russian gas to transit Ukraine via pipeline to reach consumers in Europe who still depended on it. From Kyiv’s perspective, the goal was to sustain Western support for Ukraine’s self-defense while giving Western consumers time to transition to other sources.

Europe benefited from access to Russian gas, and Russia benefited from gas sales to Europe, thus funding its war effort. All the while, Russia still paid transit fees to Ukraine, even as it sought to utterly destroy the country.

In early 2024, however, Ukraine announced that it would end these Russian gas transits when the transit agreement expired, giving European consumers time to adjust while cutting off this source of Russian revenue. As of Jan. 1, 2025, these transits were indeed terminated.

Given adequate time to prepare, Western Europe successfully put in place other means of access to energy without reliance on such transits.

The Republic of Moldova, however, faces a particularly difficult challenge.

For years, Russia had provided free natural gas through the same trans-Ukrainian pipelines to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, a narrow, landlocked sliver of land with a small number of active Russian military, intelligence and special forces officers and a total population of less than 400,000. Transnistria has Slavic roots and historical ties to Moscow, but it also possesses local and economic interests of its own.

The free gas provided by Russia to Transnistria was used by the local population directly for heat and other consumption as well as to generate electricity, which was then sold to the rest of Moldova.

This arrangement generated operating revenue for the separatist administration. It also fueled an addiction to cheap, Russian-sourced energy throughout the entire country. (Russia’s provision of cheap gas in this way is reminiscent of its energy policies toward Germany during the tenure of Chancellor Angela Merkel, at which time Moscow deliberately supplied cheap gas to Germany in order to cultivate a German interest in avoiding confrontation with Russia.)

Now that Ukraine has shut off the transits, gas is no longer flowing from Russia to Transnistria via the Ukrainian pipelines. This means that gas must arrive in Moldova by different routes—for example, through the TurkStream pipeline, or via liquified natural gas imports through the Greek port of Alexandroupolis, which would then transit through Bulgaria and Romania.

In the long term, Russian gas can be zeroed out. But in the short term, this situation gives Russia significant pressure points on Moldova as the country grapples with shortages of electricity, higher energy costs, and rolling blackouts. Public discontent is coming in the middle of winter—and crucially, before parliamentary elections that are due to be held later this year.

Moldova is neither financially nor structurally capable of replacing all Russian gas and Russian gas-generated electricity until 2026. As Prime Minister Recean told me in December, 2024, Moldova’s new electricity interconnectors with the European Union will not be fully operational until 2026. While Russia may seek to provide gas to Moldova via another route—for instance, through the TurkStream pipeline—it will charge Moldova for any gas beyond Transnistria’s immediate needs, thereby creating an immediate spike in the costs of electricity generation for Moldovan demand.

Whether the higher costs of electricity will be passed on to consumers immediately or subsidized by the government—or possibly with support from the European Union or international financial institutions—is yet to be clarified. Some tariffs have already been increased, but not to market levels.

From a sustainable economic perspective, it is only right that Moldova’s electricity costs rise to market levels. But from a strategic perspective, introducing such a steep increase immediately ahead of national elections could spark public outrage against the pro-Western government, and thus help usher in a pro-Russian government in its place. At least, this is what Moscow is counting on. This is why the EU, United States, and international financial institutions must act.

The only bright spot in this series of unfolding events is the decision by the largest private energy company in Ukraine, DTEK, to import U.S. liquified natural gas to Ukraine through the Greece-Bulgaria-Romania pipeline, thus providing access for Moldova as well. (DTEK has the ability to provide gas, coal, and electricity, depending on Moldova’s capacity and needs.)

This opens the door to a non-Russian source of gas for Moldova, although it will come at a higher price. Here, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in particular could step in with financing for such deals to help Moldova through this delicate transition in 2025. The objective should be to facilitate the country’s transition away from Russian gas altogether without passing on all of the short-term transition costs to Moldovan households in the middle of an election year.

Helping Moldova through this transition is a good example of the alignment of U.S., EU, and Ukrainian interests. Under its current pro-Western government, Moldova and Ukraine have worked together to ensure that the Russian forces in Transnistria do not open a new, western front in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

With the closing of border stations between Transnistria and Ukraine, trade and transit were forced through mainstream Moldova. This greater isolation of Transnistria has reinforced the ties of this breakaway region with the heart of Moldova while weakening Russia’s influence. If the current Moldovan government were replaced with a pro-Russian government, it could work to undermine western Ukraine using Russian bases in Transnistria.

Historically, Moldova has flip-flopped between pro-Western and pro-Russian governments. The pro-Russia sentiment, where it exists, is based on a variety of factors, including pro-Russian Moldovan oligarchs, local Slavik populations, a love-hate relationship with Romania (with which Moldova has historical and linguistic ties), and relative poverty in Moldova compared to Romania and the European Union more broadly.

Pro-Western President Maia Sandu, who served briefly as prime minister in 2019, was elected president in 2020. Following her election, her Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) then won national parliamentary elections in 2021 and has since formed a stable government. Sandu won reelection in October 2024, and a simultaneous referendum cemented the country’s aspirations to join the European Union.

But even this election victory was tenuous. A majority of voters living inside Moldova voted for her pro-Russian opponent: it was diaspora voters in Europe and the United States who gave Sandu the votes needed to win overall.

Looking ahead to Moldova’s parliamentary elections, expected by September 2025, Russia is actively funding a handful of political parties that aim to topple Moldova’s pro-Western government. These include a socialist party tied to Sandu’s predecessor as president, Igor Dodon, as well as other parties backed by Moscow through exiled Moldovan oligarch Daniel Shor. Both are mounting an aggressive challenge to the PAS government, and energy disruptions and spiking prices could easily play into their hands.

Moscow is calculating that the economic hardships of high electricity prices and rolling blackouts will cause voters to blame Sandu and Prime Minister Dorin Recean, shifting votes instead to parties that are perceived as being capable of cutting a deal with Russia.

If this strategy succeeds, Moscow’s proxies in Moldova could gain a majority in parliament, and Moldova could flip from being an ally of the West and Ukraine in defending against Russian aggression to an entity doing Russia’s bidding right on Ukraine’s western border. This would be a disaster not only for Moldova, but for Ukraine as well.

Regardless of the mechanisms used, the West and Ukraine together have a vital interest in assisting Moldova through this energy transition with minimal political cost for the Moldovan government. In the short term, the cutoff of free Russian gas is a crisis that Russia seeks to exploit. In the medium to long term, however, the cutoff and its replacement with Western sources is an opportunity: not just to diminish Russian influence over the country, but also to reunite the economic and political interests of Transnistria and the rest of Moldova, and to facilitate Moldova’s entry into the European Union and NATO.

To favor such a positive turn of events, the United States and EU should move quickly to accelerate the building of alternative gas and electricity links to Moldova, to provide financing that allows Moldova to phase in higher consumer energy prices more slowly, and to work with private sector actors who have the immediate means to address Moldova’s energy needs. All three must come together in a coherent strategy that will advance the West’s overall strategic interests for years to come.