Moldova gets support from partners amid series of hardships

SIGHISOARA, Romania (AP) — Moldova received about 600 million euros in pledges at a donors conference Friday, an official said, to help the tiny country overcome rising inflation and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

More than 500,000 refugees have fled to Moldova, which borders Ukraine, since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. The situation has put a huge strain on resources in Europe’s poorest country, which is looking to forge closer ties with the West.

Moldova is also fully dependent on Russian gas supplies, with prices hiking four-fold in the last year, and is now contending with skyrocketing inflation.

The Moldova Support Platform donor meeting Friday was held in Romania's capital, Bucharest, and was co-chaired by Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu, German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, and French secretary of state for development Chrysoula Zacharopoulou. Delegates from the Group of Seven and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also attended the event.

“We may not have the power to stop the war in Ukraine today or tomorrow, due to Russia‘s brutality,” Baerbock wrote online after the event. “But we do have the means to help a democratic country to prevent it from being crushed by the effects of this war.”

The initiative, which was launched in Berlin in early April, aims to help Moldova, a former Soviet republic with a population of about 2.6 million, deal with the fallout of Russia's war in Ukraine and offer support from partners on its reform path as it aims to one day to obtain full membership in the 27-nation European Union.

After the meeting, Aurescu told a news conference that around 600 million euros “in various forms” were raised.

“We put the needs next to the problems, and we managed to put the resources next to the needs,”...