Moldovans grapple with outages as energy crisis grips pro-Russia region

Every time planned electrical outages are imposed on his village in southern Moldova, 73-year-old retiree Vasili Donici passes the time by solving crosswords and puzzles in a room he illuminates using a small gas lamp. His village, Copanca, is situated just several kilometers across the de facto border from Moldova’s separatist pro-Russian Transnistria region, where hundreds of thousands of people were left without heating and hot water after Russia halted gas supplies to the region on Jan. 1. Like other towns controlled by Moldovan authorities in Chisinau but situated near Transnistria, Copanca remains interconnected to the separatist region’s Soviet-era energy infrastructure.