A Gas Cutoff Sends Shivers Through a Russian-Backed Breakaway Region

The shop used to sell flowers and gardening gear to visitors from just down the road, where a tiny breakaway region of Moldova has for more than 30 years stood defiantly apart, with support from Russian troops.

Since the halt of gas from Russia on New Year’s Day, however, the store has been selling mostly electric heaters to freezing residents of Transnistria, the self-declared microstate in eastern Moldova.

The cheaper models have already sold out, a saleswoman said, but higher-end heaters are selling fast, as 350,000 inhabitants of Transnistria endure an energy crisis that has shut down factories, left Soviet-era apartment blocks without heating and hot water and raised questions about the survival of their go-it-alone, Russian-speaking enclave.

The situation is so bad that the region’s president, Vadim Krasnoselsky — who leads an entity unrecognized by all other countries, including Russia — tried to reassure his people on Thursday: “We will not allow a societal collapse.”