Energy Independence in the Dark

The January 31 blackout laid bare the symptoms of serious flaws in energy policy over recent years, as a result of which the country has been left without domestic generation and reliable external supply routes

Saturday morning turned into a cold shower for a large share of Moldova’s population, both literally and figuratively. Widespread power outages affected not only the capital but much of the country, including the Transnistrian region. A scenario that many had regarded as purely hypothetical suddenly became reality. Citizens were confronted with an utterly unfamiliar scene: trolleybuses at a standstill, traffic lights dark, pharmacies closed, elevators stuck, and people freezing at bus stops, unable to understand what was happening. The blackout that struck went far beyond a mere technical incident, becoming a moment of truth for the long-standing political ideology of Moldova’s so-called “energy independence”. With the exception of last winter and the energy crisis that erupted on the left bank of the Dniester, Moldovan society as a whole has long grown unaccustomed to large-scale power outages. Such episodes seemed to belong to a distant past – the 1990s or the early 2000s, when rolling blackouts were a common occurrence across the country. Yet the events of January 31 demonstrated that Moldova’s energy vulnerability has never truly gone away, and that the supposed resilience to such shocks, relentlessly promoted by the court press and PAS, is nothing but an illusion, capable of collapsing within a matter of minutes. According to the official version, at 10:42 a technological failure occurred that simultaneously led to the disconnection of the 400 kV line linking the Romanian and Moldovan power systems and the 750 kV line between western and central Ukraine. This, in turn, triggered sequential tripping within Ukraine’s energy system, the activation of automatic protection mechanisms, and the shutdown of nuclear power plant units. Given that Moldova’s grid is synchronized with Ukraine’s, the chain reaction could not bypass our country. Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, cited technical problems on the power lines between Ukraine and Moldova as the cause of the incident. However, the sequence of statements has failed to produce a coherent picture of what actually happened. Notably, Chisinau and Kyiv, countries that in recent years have demonstrated exemplary coordination in their communication strategies, have effectively begun shifting responsibility onto one another. Our eastern neighbor points to the Romania-Moldova-Ukraine high-voltage transmission line as the primary source of the failure. Moldovan relevant authorities, meanwhile, cautiously hint at problems on the Ukrainian side, portraying the outages at home as a secondary, knock-on effect. Formally, the situation was stabilized fairly quickly. Nevertheless, the very fact that emergency supplies were required, along with insufficient volumes of electricity from Romania, including via three medium-voltage backup lines crossing the Prut River, indicates that the overall state of affairs remains fragile. Nor, it would seem, were the authorities’ appeals to citizens to minimize electricity consumption accidental, given the technical wear and tear of the transmission lines linking Moldova with Romania, which are not designed to handle current peak loads. In other words, even after power supply was restored, the republic’s energy system continues to operate at the very limit of its capabilities. Consequently, any new accident in Ukraine, through whose territory the main transit routes pass, could once again trigger wave of outages on both the right and left banks of the Dniester. This, in fact, is the key refutation of claims about the “full energy independence” allegedly achieved by PAS and Maia Sandu. At the same time, the core problem lies not so much in the accident itself (no energy system in the world is immune to failures or climate-related force majeure), but in the fact that Moldova proved to be completely unprepared for such a scenario: technically, politically, and communicationally. One of the authorities’ major flaws, in our view, was presenting the refusal to engage in any interaction with the MoldGRES, that is, abandoning the purchase of electricity generated on the country’s constitutional territory at a power plant whose very physical existence helps eliminate a significant number of risks, as a “strategic breakthrough”. At the same time, the shift to imports from Romania (given that the transit lines run through war-torn Ukraine) was framed as a symbol of strengthened energy sovereignty. Last Saturday made it painfully clear to many that abandoning traditional electricity supply arrangements is nothing more than a dangerous gamble by the ruling regime. Stable supplies of relatively inexpensive electricity generated on the left bank of the Dniester were deliberately excluded from the equation for purely political reasons. In exchange, the country received a more expensive resource, dependence on transit routes with heightened risks, and additional costs further compounded by the absence of any guarantees of uninterrupted supply. The information failure is no less significant. For years, PAS representatives have enthusiastically told citizens about “achieved energy independence”, a “victory in the hybrid war”, and “championship-level resilience”. No one seems to have taken into account that such rhetoric drastically narrowed the room for maneuver in the event of extraordinary developments. Now, it appears that any attempt even temporarily to return to cooperation with the MGRES will be perceived as a political defeat and provoke a sharp backlash, especially among the pro-European segment of society. As a result, PAS leaders have effectively made themselves hostages of their own propaganda and, most likely, will proceed from the logic that the risk of another blackout is preferable to acknowledging the erroneous nature of past decisions. Particularly telling in this context was the reaction or rather, the complete lack of it from the president. Both domestic and international media have for years portrayed Maia Sandu as a politician of almost global stature, a symbol of democratic resistance and a supposed “success story”. Yet at the moment of a serious energy shock inside the country, this “outstanding leader” effectively disappeared from the public space, choosing to distance herself from a crisis that directly affected hundreds of thousands of citizens. The events of 31 January effectively shattered the mythologized image that the authorities had been constructing over the past several years. With enviable confidence, citizens were told that state institutions had never been stronger, that the political system was functioning smoothly, and that crisis management had reached Western standards. Yet it took a single blackout for all of this to vanish into thin air. Crucially, it was not only electricity that disappeared, but also citizens’ confidence that the situation was truly under control. In this context, it is worth recalling the “mega-project” of the Vulcanesti-Chisinau high-voltage power line, which the authorities long presented as the key to the country’s energy security. The recent failure clearly demonstrated that even bringing this line into operation will not provide a safeguard against such incidents. Unless the authorities develop diversification options and maintain backup contracts for emergency scenarios, Moldova will continue to remain in the same vulnerable position. The blackout on January 31 exposed the symptoms of serious problems, as years of energy policy have left the country without domestic generation, reliable external supply routes, or an honest dialogue with its own citizens. Today, there are no guarantees that an emergency scenario will not recur. And no matter how much the authorities continue to pretend that everything is under control, the objective reality remains different. Unfortunately, in this reality, citizens are left to rely solely on themselves: always keeping some cash on hand, keeping power banks charged, and stocking up on candles, food, and patience.