Several international connections are posted on the Chişinău train station departure board: one to St. Petersburg, three to Moscow, but all without a time stamp.

Only one train to Bucharest has been announced.

Because traffic from the capital of the Republic of Moldova is currently only flowing in one direction: to the west.

Andreas Mihm

Business correspondent for Austria, Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey based in Vienna.

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So does the blue and yellow regional train to Ungheni, which is waiting on platform 1.

He used to drive three times a week.

Now, Prime Minister Natalia Gavriliţa is proud of it, it rolls to the Romanian border every day.

It takes him three hours to cover the 100 kilometers, the ticket costs the equivalent of 2 euros, and the conductor accepts credit cards.

Prime Minister Gavrilița is setting off with her cabinet for a meeting in the provinces this October morning.

"We have to talk about it and show what we're doing," she says.

Modernize rail transport, for example.

Lay water pipes and sewers, asphalt roads.

But above all smooth the bumpy road to EU membership proposed by Brussels with the reform of the judiciary and the fight against corruption.

That in itself is a Herculean task that, given the protests in the country, the daily bad news from the energy front and the war in neighboring Ukraine, it seems comparatively easy to solve.

The small republic of 2.6 million inhabitants, in which demonstrators are paid by oligarchs who have fled to protest against the government, has been existentially affected by the war in Ukraine and its consequences: economic output is shrinking, inflation is 34 percent, interest rates 25 percent discourage business people.

Not to mention the costs for the 600,000 refugees from Ukraine who were in the country at least part of the time.

Now a second wave of refugees is looming.

Russia is always the center of attention

In 1992 the former Soviet republic became independent.

Nevertheless, Russia is always the center of attention: as an extortionate supplier of energy, as an occupier of the Transnistrian part of the country, as a boycotter of Moldovan agricultural products, as an exporter of war propaganda on the widely watched Russian TV channels in the country.

"The Russians hold our heads under the water until we can't breathe anymore," says a manager in Chişinău in an angry voice.

Representatives of the Roma community in Soroca in the north-east of the country react quite differently: "Everything depends on the Americans," says Valeri Preida about the war in Ukraine.

Criticizing Putin for this is wrong.

More than anywhere else in Europe, the energy crisis in Moldova appears as a social issue.

Nowhere else is the income so low - the average salary is 500 to 700 euros a month, 1000 euros is a top salary.

A liter of milk still costs the equivalent of 1.20 euros in the supermarket.

Leading utility Premier Energy is charging consumers twice as much for electricity as in the previous year, and the price of gas has increased more than sixfold.

"It's going to be a very tough winter," says 50-year-old Prime Minister Gavrilița, a Harvard-educated economist, as the train rocks her west.

The prophecy applies not only to energy prices, but also to your pro-European government.