My understanding is that most of the economy in Transnistria is basically there because Russia has been providing highly-subsidized gas, and that if they were paying market rate, a lot of the industry there would simply go under.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria#Economy

The economy is based on a mix of heavy industry (steel production), electricity production, and manufacturing (textile production), which together account for about 80% of the total industrial output.

Steel production and electricity production at least are going to be basically driven by access to that gas.

I mean, yeah, it'd probably be efficient for it to go under and for resources and labor tied up in it to shift to something else. But I suppose that they're basically staring at overwhelming and rapid deindustrialization. Like, I would guess that a lot of people in Transnistria are basically looking at the future and seeing a giant gaping void.

I mean, Germany was very much affected by political pressures related to cheap Russian natural gas around the outset of the conflict, and Germany's industry is much less dependent on the gas and has a more-diversified economy.

The place might have a whole ton of other factors involved, ethnic, corruption, Russia buying influence, whatever, but even if you removed that from the picture, and you're just thinking about the perspective of some random person in Transnistria, I can believe that the economic disruption that they're facing from that huge shift is pretty staggering.

They probably need to make plans no matter what, and they probably shouldn't have put themselves in this place, but at this point, I expect that all the options they have are gonna be near-term very bad.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

The dependence had been very much encouraged. The political influence there was a core strategy and very effective.