What is Russia plotting in Moldova?

Prime minister Natalia Gavriliţa resigns following months of rising Russian pressure

The Russian and Transnistrian flags fly next to each other
Soviet-era statues still stand in the contested Moldovan region of Transnistria
(Image credit: Sergei Gapon / AFP via Getty Images)

Moldova’s government collapsed on Friday after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia was planning to “destroy” the tiny former Soviet republic.

In a surprise press briefing, Prime Minister Natalia Gavriliţa stood down “amid the worsening economic fallout from the war in neighbouring Ukraine”, said The Wall Street Journal. Inflation has “soared”, peaking at 30% in December “after Moscow’s decision to throttle natural-gas supplies, and prompting a wave of street protests”.

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Jamie Timson is the UK news editor, curating The Week UK's daily morning newsletter and setting the agenda for the day's news output. He was first a member of the team from 2015 to 2019, progressing from intern to senior staff writer, and then rejoined in September 2022. As a founding panellist on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast, he has discussed politics, foreign affairs and conspiracy theories, sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. In between working at The Week, Jamie was a senior press officer at the Department for Transport, with a penchant for crisis communications, working on Brexit, the response to Covid-19 and HS2, among others.