Evghenia Guțul

Evghenia Guțul (born 5 September 1986 ), also rendered Yevgenia Gutsul (Евгения Гуцул) and Eugenia Guțul,  is a Moldovan Gagauzian jurist and politician, who has served as Governor of Gagauzia since 19 July 2023.

As Governor, she has sought to have closer relations with Russia. Following her party's banning by Moldovan authorities, she has been an independent.

Early life
Guțul was born on 5 September 1986 in the village of Etulia, a Gagauz village in the Moldavian SSR of the Soviet Union. Guțul's maiden name is Buiucli. She is married and has two children, and continues to maintain Etulia as her permanent place of residence.

Prior to her 2023 election, Guțul had no significant political background. After attending school to become a lawyer, she worked as a telephone operator from 2012 to 2014. Afterwards she worked as a telecommunications operator, commercial representative, and archivist. Guțul only entered politics when she worked as a secretary for her local Shor branch in 2018.

Political career
Guțul has built her political career as a pro-Russian activist. On 22 March 2023, she was selected as candidate for Governor of Gagauzia by the Șor Party. During the election campaign, Guțul promised that if she is elected, she will build an airport worth 100 million euros, increase the salaries of budget workers by 30%, build an amusement park and that there will be other investments in infrastructure, education, and other sectors of the economy. Some journalists described many of the promises as unrealistic, as in their assessment the implementation of such projects are beyond the powers of the Governor. Guțul was supported in the elections by oligarch and party Chair Ilan Șor, lawmakers Marina Tauber and Reghina Apostolova, as well as several Russian performers and artists, such as Nikolay Baskov, Philipp Kirkorov, and Stas Mikhaylov, as well as Leonid Slutsky, the leader of the Russian ultra-nationalist LDPR.

Başkan of Gagauzia
In the 2023 Gagauz gubernatorial election, she finished the first round in first place with 14,890 votes (26.47%), but given the fact that a majority was not met, the second round took place on 14 May. In the second round, Guțul obtained 27,376 of the votes (52.39%), defeating the independent candidate Grigorii Uzun, supported by the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, who had 24,926 votes (47.66%), thus winning a 4-year mandate at the head of the autonomous unit. In her victory speech, Guțul affirmed her intention to align the region closer with Russia. Following the banning of Șor on June 19, 2023, Guțul announced that she would take office and govern Gagauzia as a political independent.

Guțul assumed the position of governor on 19 July 2023.

Guțul named Sergei Ibrishim as the head of the Main Directorate of the Agro-Industrial Complex of Gagauzia, the governmental branch in charge of agriculture and industry. A noted Russophile, Ibrishim personally wrote a letter to the Kremlin urging Russian intervention to allow Gagauzian goods to be sold in Russia at the same rate as that prior to Moldova's withdrawal from the CIS in December 2023.

One of Guțul's first acts in office was to perform a state visit to Russia, where she met with Russian officials from March 1 to March 8, 2024. Guțul outlined three key economic policies that would be created as a result of her visit, the first was a "special gas tariff", independent from the tariff on Moldova, without input from Moldovan officials, bypassing sanctions placed on Russian gas companies. Secondly Gagauzia, and its residents, would be integrated into the MIR payment system. Lastly, Gagauzia will have an independent excise taxes and duties on Russian goods, without input from the Moldovan government. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has deemed this a form of "energy blackmail" against Moldova, as the lower tariffs would make it nearly impossible for the Moldovan government to reduce dependence on Gagauzia's four Gazprom natural gas power plants.



On 13 March 2024, Guțul announced that she was organizing a meeting with prominent pro-Russian politicians of Moldova, such as Igor Dodon, Vladimir Voronin, Ilan Shor, and the leadership of the Revival Party. This quadrumvir of Dodon, Guțul, Shor, and Voronin, are possibly organizing into one singular opposition movement against the pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity to contest the 2024 presidential and the 2025 parliamentary elections.

On 12 June 2024, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Guțul, freezing any assets held by her in the country and banning its citizens from dealing with her.