Bucharest residents are suffering from the cold because Romanian gas is being sent to Ukraine and Moldova, according to a false narrative promoted by sovereigntist propaganda.
NEWS: Something very serious is happening, and it’s starting to stink: since winter began, thousands of apartment buildings in Bucharest have been left without heating and hot water. Tens of thousands of people are freezing and can’t shower. On January 9, a massive Russian shelling left 6,000 Ukrainian apartment blocks without electricity. A few days later, only 500 still reported issues. They managed to fix the situation under drone and missile attacks. In Bucharest, no one is bombing anything, yet 3,500 apartment blocks are currently disconnected from heating. Patients are freezing in hospitals, children are shivering in schools and kindergartens, the elderly are dying in their homes. And then comes the hallucinatory explanation from Ciucu: heat cannot be supplied because the distribution network is too old and risks exploding. Pure madness. In effect, Ciucu is telling us not to expect heat this winter, because an old network gets repaired over the summer (if it gets repaired at all!) not in the middle of winter. You wretches, you criminals, you servants who care about the people only before an election - could it be we are not being told the truth? Could it be that it’s not that the network suddenly failed overnight, but that something else is the real reason you’ve crippled the capital? Could it be that you massively pumped gas from the winter reserves for Ukrainians and Moldovans, and now, you assassins, you’ve realized there isn’t enough left for Romanians? Could it be that you’ve taken us back to communist times, when Ceaușescu left Romanians without electricity so the energy-guzzling industrial giants could keep running? Should we just put on another coat, just like Ceaușescu used to say? Just asking!!!
NARRATIVE: “Romanian” gas is being sent to Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, at the expense of the population’s comfort.
PURPOSE: To promote anti-Ukrainian and even anti-Moldovan and anti-unionist discourse, to stir and amplify social unrest, to validate previously promoted conspiracy theories.
Romania does not export “Romanian” gas to Ukraine
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: In recent weeks, the Romanian media and social networks have once again circulated an alarmist claim that Romania has run out of natural gas for domestic consumption because it has “redirected most of its gas to Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova”. The narrative was later linked to the problems of Bucharest’s district heating network, which left thousands of apartments without hot water and heat, and was amplified by emotional texts suggesting that the authorities “sacrificed” Romania’s population for other countries. This is, clearly, a crude act of disinformation, first and foremost because the gas that reaches Ukraine is not “Romanian,” meaning not from domestic production. It merely transits our national territory through the so-called Vertical Corridor and comes from Ukrainian imports via Greek terminals. Romania is therefore not deliberately redirecting its own production to Ukraine. It is true, however, that Romania delivers approximately 5–6 million cubic meters of natural gas per day to Moldova. These exports are carried out on a contractual basis, within the limits of Romania’s national export infrastructure capacity. This does not mean that Romania is “running out of gas”. In fact, Bucharest officials publicly assured, as early as last year, that Romania has sufficient reserves to get through the winter, and that gas reserves are at levels considered normal for the season.
Furthermore, Romania does not directly supply gas to Ukraine during the cold season. Although transit routes exist, they do not reflect exports of Romanian gas directly to Ukraine. An analysis published in September 2025 shows that Romania has not exported a single cubic meter of gas to Ukraine since the start of September. Although later reports did indicate a limited resumption of gas deliveries toward Ukraine, the gas was exported via pipelines for LNG imported from Greece, not as a result of redirecting Romania’s domestic production toward Ukraine at the expense of local consumption.
Admittedly, Romania is affected by the region’s energy problems caused by the suspension of Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine, which put pressure on all European countries to optimize reserves and supply flows. But there has been no instance in which the authorities sacrificed Romanian consumers for the sake of other states. The Republic of Moldova and Ukraine have their own supply strategies, including direct purchases on European markets and planned stockpiling ahead of winter. Moldova, for instance, secured volumes of gas in storage sufficient to cover seasonal consumption.
In fact, Bucharest residents’ winter heating problems are strictly caused by the district heating system and the lack of investment in it, not by gas exports. International flows affect prices and, in extreme cases, supply security for the entire region, not just Romania. Bucharest’s centralized heating system uses an aging infrastructure with major network losses and cannot cope with peak demand. Moreover, a number of power plants are operating at reduced capacity or are completely shut down, while those still running are inefficient, affecting both heat and electricity production.
All in all, claims such as “Romania has run out of gas because it gave it to Ukraine and Moldova” are misleading and unrepresentative. Energy supply issues have complex causes: European market prices, reserve levels, aging infrastructure, consumption fluctuations, and cannot be reduced to a simplistic conspiracy theory.
Ukraine, the convenient culprit
BACKGROUND: Facing a serious natural gas deficit due to Russian attacks on its gas production facilities, Ukraine is currently importing gas from multiple directions: via Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania in the West, as well as from Azerbaijan or LNG terminals in Greece and Turkey, through the Trans-Balkan pipeline that crosses Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova in the south. Disguised as a rhetorical question, the narrative of preferential energy supply to the two neighboring countries, to the detriment of Romania’s population, is not new. It resurfaced alongside the extremely low temperatures Romania is currently facing and in the context of Bucharest’s heating network failures. Thus, in the summer of 2025, sovereigntist propaganda claimed Romania would bear the cost of Ukraine’s gas supply, and later in fall, an AUR deputy claimed that Moldovans are receiving Romanian electricity at a lower price compared to Romanians.
Radu Cristescu is a politician known for his anti-European views and one of the most vocal supporters of “sovereignism” within PSD. He is also a staunch supporter of the MAGA movement and an admirer of US President Donald Trump. Cristescu served as a deputy in the 2020–2024 legislature, elected on behalf of PSD, after having been a member of the PMP until 2019, the party founded by former president Traian Băsescu. After being expelled from that party, he became a Social-Democrat during the term of Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă, who also offered him a government post—Secretary of State with the Ministry of Energy.
In the spring of 2025, Radu Cristescu was at the center of a political-diplomatic scandal, when a Snoop investigation revealed that his daughter had been posted, after only one month of work in a department of the Bucharest District 4 City Hall, to the General Consulate of Romania in New York, where she was hired as a “consular agent”, although she presented herself as a “vice-consul”. The former deputy later casually admitted that “he himself had hired his daughter at the District 4 City Hall”, run by Social Democrat Mayor Daniel Băluță, even though he held no position there. Before the second round of the 2025 presidential election, Cristescu claimed that “George Simion is leading by a wide margin in the Republic of Moldova”, but that “the sacks of ballots (i.e., with votes in favor of Nicușor Dan) are already prepared, as are the minutes”. Similarly, he claimed the presidential election In Moldova had been rigged, which led to Maia Sandu’s victory. In the Republic of Moldova, Nicușor Dan won 88% of the vote.
In a March post, Cristescu called European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “a shameless crony with dictatorial tendencies and a brain washed by bloodlust”. and referred to French President Emmanuel Macron, saying he is “the golden boy of the global elites”. Beyond his anti-European stances, the former official is openly hostile toward Ukraine and its president. For example, in February 2025, after the tense White House meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, he wrote on Facebook that the leader in Kyiv put on “an abject display of stupidity and insolence. Dressed like a vagrant who just got off a tractor, he walked into a diplomatic meeting of utmost importance as if he were entering a tavern”.
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