France’s President Emmanuel Macron announced an additional international aid package worth more than 100 million euros ($103 million) for the eastern European country of Moldova.
Macron wrote on Twitter that this aid comes "to respond to the immediate needs of Moldova and its population" in the face of the repercussions of the military operation in Kyiv.
On Monday evening, the French president, speaking at a donors' conference for Moldova in Paris, stated that much of that aid should focus on helping Moldova deal with its energy crisis.
Representatives of 45 countries and institutions met in the French capital to increase and strengthen their promised support for Moldova, according to Radio Free Europe.
Moldova suffers power outages as it deals with an influx of refugees and an acute energy crisis.
In the past hundreds of millions of euros have been collected for Moldova, but its needs continue to grow with the approach of winter.
According to Macron, the new financial package includes 10 million euros, which will be allocated by the end of the year in the form of grants to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Programme, and UNICEF.
On her part, Moldovan President Maia Sandu said, at the end of the conference, which France co-chaired, that the high energy costs and inflation will put enormous pressure on consumers in the country with a population of about 2.6 million people with the advent of winter.
She added that many people may not be able to pay their bills if the government does not intervene.
Moldova relied heavily on Russian energy before the military operation in Ukraine and was increasingly looking forward to closer ties with the West.
Moldova was announced as a candidate for membership in the EU last June, along with Ukraine.
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