Speaking after a donors’ conference hosted in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Germany would work to help Moldova break free of its dependence on Russia for energy supplies. With less than 3 million people, Moldova has received more refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine per capita than any other country. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register “We agreed today to support Moldova with loans, budget support and other financial assistance of 659.5 million euros,” Bayerbok said at the end of a conference she co-hosted with her French and Romanian counterparts. Like Ukraine, Moldova is a former part of the Soviet Union, part of which is occupied by Moscow-backed separatists. Although it has strong historical and linguistic ties with neighboring Romania, a member of the European Union, it relies solely on Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP.MM) for gas imports. Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita called on donors at the conference, which was attended by EU and French and Romanian foreign ministers, to support diversifying her country’s energy reserves, even when dealing with refugees in need. “Since the beginning of the war, 400,000 refugees have crossed the Moldovan border and 100,000 have decided to stay,” he said. “Almost half of them are children, they are vulnerable populations.” Moldova’s electricity grid needed to be interconnected with the European Union grid at the Romanian border in order to boost its energy independence, he said. He also called on the EU to remove barriers to the sale of its agricultural products to the west, noting that Russia, Belarus and Ukraine accounted for 15% of Moldova’s foreign trade before the war. “Moldova is the most vulnerable of Ukraine’s neighbors,” he said. “Today Moldova needs good friends and reliable partners.” ($ 1 = 0.9178 euros) (This story corrects the title, paragraphs 1.4 after correcting the ministry’s number to 659.5 million, not 695 million.) Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Thomas Escritt. Edited by: Madeline Chambers and David Holmes Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
