Breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria says it has less than a month of gas left

The breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria will run out of gas used for limited cooking and heating in less than a month, authorities warned Wednesday, as a shutdown in Russian supplies plunges the separatist state into crisis.

“The country is not only in a state of energy crisis, but also a humanitarian one,” the region’s deputy prime minister, Sergei Obolonik, was quoted as saying in a statement on a government website. 

The blocking of power supplies to Transnistria by Moldova is a mockery of the area's residents, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

The diplomat noted that it "is happening under the model the West is promoting around the world, under the false slogans of freedom and democracy, which implies addressing political and geopolitical issues with all available tools, including, quite literally, neo-Nazism."

"They start to harass and persecute people on national and socio-cultural grounds. The entire armory, the whole toolkit is being used, as it concerns the absolutely limitless, permissive use of the whole range of methods that should have disappeared into oblivion. They use everything, from linguistic harassment to now shutting down vital sources. It's mockery in the truest sense of this term," the spokeswoman said.