A man holds his child as families who fled Ukraine because of the Russian invasion wait to arrive on April 3.
Nikolay Doychinov | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Russia’s war on Ukraine has uncovered a host of new threats to the tiny landlocked country of Moldova, which is grappling with an influx of Ukrainian refugees while maintaining its complete reliance on Russian gas.
Moldova is Eastern Europe’s smallest nation with fewer than 3 million people and a landmass slightly larger than the state of Maryland. In less than two months, however, it was overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing Russia’s ongoing military campaign.
“Of course we cannot compare ourselves with Ukraine and the tragedy that Ukraine is going through,” Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu said on April 19.
“But we are Ukraine’s most fragile neighbor because we are the most affected country and we are the country that has the least resources to deal with the situation and the consequences of the war,” Popescu added.
Popescu, who concluded a series of meetings at the State Department last week, said more than 400,000 people had fled to Moldova to escape Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.
“We let everyone in because they are fleeing the war,” Popescu said, adding that Moldova has relaxed entry and visa requirements for Ukrainian nationals and is currently working to provide long-term access to health care and education.
“This is much faster, much bigger than anything seen before,” Popescu said, adding that the refugee crisis has threatened Moldova’s stability and economic development.
Ukrainian refugees stand next to their belongings after arriving at Bordeaux International Airport from Moldova April 21, 2022.
Philippe Lopez | AFP | Getty Images
The ongoing war next door has left landlocked Moldova, a former Soviet republic and one of Europe’s poorest countries, in a precarious position.
Hoping to ease Moldova’s fragility, the country last week submitted a questionnaire required for European Union membership. The bid process comes as Russian officials are suggesting the Kremlin’s war may have the potential to expand beyond Ukraine.
On Friday, Russian commander Rustam Minnekayev said Moscow wanted “full control” of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Minnekayev explained that seizing that part of the country would allow the Kremlin to create a “land corridor” from Russia in the east through Transnistria to Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Russia forcibly annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Asked about a possible Russian invasion of Moldova, Igor Zhovkva, deputy head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told NBC’s Meet the Press that there was a high probability of Russian troops invading Moldova.
“Now they want to conquer the whole Donbass. Yes, they want the connection between Donbass and Crimea,” Zhovkva told NBC. “As for Moldova, yes, we heard these announcements from Russian officials,” Zhovkva continued. “Who knows? You never know with Russia, but that could be a high probability.”
Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu speaks during a bilateral meeting hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken April 18, 2022 at the State Department in Washington, DC.
Stefanie Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Adding to Moldova’s vulnerability on the front lines of Eastern Europe is its complete dependence on Russian gas supplies.
Popescu said that 100% of Moldova’s gas supply comes from Russia and 80% of its electricity comes from the Transnistria region, a heavily armed breakaway region controlled by Russia whose borders touch Ukraine and Moldova.
“We are very, very vulnerable on the frontline of energy resilience,” Popescu said, adding that his country has limited access to international trade due to Moldova’s geography.
“We used to import quite a lot of goods from Ukraine and quite a lot through Ukraine from the port of Odessa, which was the cheapest shipping way, but now all that has stopped,” he said, adding that Moldova is aggressively working to establish new trade ties.