kyiv (Reuters) – Power cuts will continue on Saturday in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, which has been left without Russian gas supplies following Ukraine's decision not to extend a contract for the transit of Russian gas, local authorities said. .
Russian gas flows through Ukraine to central and eastern Europe stopped on New Year's Day after the expiration of a transit agreement between the warring countries, and kyiv refused to do more business with Moscow.
Transdniestrian officials said the first power cuts came into effect on Friday night.
The mainly Russian-speaking region, which lies along the Moldova-Ukraine border and which split from Moldova in the 1990s, received Russian gas through Ukraine and used it to produce electricity.
The Transdniestria government's official Telegram news channel said power would be cut for three hours between 2:00 p.m. (12:00 GMT) and 5:00 p.m. in many districts.
The enclave's self-proclaimed president, Vadim Krasnoselsky, had previously said that power outages were inevitable. He said the region had gas reserves to cover 10 days of limited use in the north and double that in the south. He did not say whether there were plans to obtain supplies after that.
On Saturday, Krasnoselsky said on Telegram that the blackouts could extend to four hours on Sunday.
Russia denies using gas as a weapon to coerce Moldova and blames kyiv for refusing to renew the gas transit agreement.
Moldova itself sources around 60% of its gas needs from Romania and produces the rest. But power outages in Transdniestria are a problem for Moldova, particularly because the enclave is home to a power plant that provides most of the power to areas controlled by the Moldovan government at a low, fixed price.
Prime Minister Dorin Recean said on Friday his country was facing a security crisis after the imposition of rolling blackouts in Transdniestria, but also said the government in Chisinau had prepared alternative arrangements, with a mix of domestic production and electricity imports from Romania.
Moldova says Russian gas giant Gazprom (MCX:) could supply gas bypassing Ukraine, but has deliberately decided not to. Even before the disruption of supplies through Ukraine, Gazprom had said on December 28 that it would suspend exports to Moldova on January 1 due to what Russia says are unpaid Moldovan debts of $709 million.
Moldova denies this and puts the figure at $8.6 million.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
