Moldova's emergency and Canada's aid, December 2024

What did parliaments in Chisinau and Ottawa decide in the days before 17 December 2024, and how did their choices tie back to the war in Ukraine?

On 13 December 2024, the Parliament of Moldova voted to declare a 60-day national state of emergency beginning on 16 December. The reason given was that Ukraine was not renewing its transit contract with Gazprom to deliver Russian gas to Moldova. By 17 December 2024, the emergency measure had therefore been in force for a day.

The vote is one example of how the war reached beyond Ukraine's borders. Moldova had already been affected since the Russian invasion: it accepted Ukrainian refugees, opened a bank account for donations, and unofficially imposed sanctions on Russia.

The second decision came on 11 December 2024, when the Parliament of Canada approved the allocation of CA$764 million (US$587 million) in military aid to Ukraine.

Two kinds of exposure

The two decisions point in different directions. Canada's vote concerned support for Ukraine's military. Moldova's concerned the consequences of a gas transit contract that Ukraine was not renewing, which the Moldovan parliament treated as grounds for an emergency.

Taken together, they show the range of ways the war was handled by legislatures in December 2024: through funding on one side, and through emergency powers on the other.