The road bridge over the Prut at Ungheni has reached 56% physical completion, CNAIR says. Fifty workers and 33 machines are on site, and the Romanian road company gives December 2027 as the contractual completion deadline.
A year and four months after work began, the Ungheni–Zagarancea road bridge has half of its structure raised, and on the Moldovan bank installation of the first metal deck segment has started. Minister Vladimir Bolea inspected the site on 11 August. The Romanian bank is further along — 70% of the deck — while the original deadline, July 2026, has slipped towards autumn. Even once finished, the bridge cannot be crossed until the customs post is built, with a 2028 horizon.
On August 7, the court ordered public custody and a five-year entry ban for two citizens of Bangladesh, detained by the Border Police during an attempted illegal border crossing in the Ungheni district area, as part of efforts to counter a network allegedly involving Moldovan citizens as well. It is the second case of this kind reported at Ungheni's border in six weeks. We explain what differs, in law, between illegal border crossing — a crime — and breaching the residence regime, a mere administrative offence, and what comes next for the two.
On 29 July, at the Sculeni Border Crossing Point, Romanian border police officers detained a citizen of the Republic of Moldova wanted under a European arrest warrant issued by Finland. The accusations have not been tried by any court. The case is the anchor of an explainer about what the booth through which Ungheni district leaves for the European Union actually checks — four layers of control and, since 2 March 2026, the facial image and four fingerprints.
Romania's national railway (CFR) has published, in the Electronic Public Procurement System (SEAP), the notice for the design and construction of the electrification of the Iași–Border line — the concrete step our explainer a week ago flagged as the «next» one. The contract, estimated at 289.55 million lei excluding VAT, covers the Socola–Ungheni section and is the Romanian half of the joint project with the Republic of Moldova, which is to give Bessarabia its first kilometre of electrified railway — right through Ungheni. The deadline for bids: 5 August 2026.
After Bucharest approved the electrification of the Iași–border line, the Moldovan side got to work: on 25 June, representatives of the Railway of Moldova met in Iași with their Romanian counterparts to coordinate the Iași–Ungheni line project. Among the agreed steps — the technical assessment of the bridge over the Prut, which is to be reconstructed, and preparing the systems for the future electrification, to European standards.
In Brussels, at the launch of the EU's Connectivity Agenda Platform, the Republic of Moldova, the European Commission and the European Investment Bank recorded the start of preparing the feasibility study for an entirely new electrified railway with European gauge on the Ungheni–Chișinău route. Trains designed for at least 140 km/h, able to run without changing axles at the border — and the starting point is Ungheni itself. It is the step that carries inland the electrified line from Iași we wrote about last week. For now it is only a study: the real cost and timeline will come out of it.
The international “Basarabia” train, which links Kyiv to Chisinau through Ungheni station, switches from an every-other-day service to a daily one on 28 June. Ukrainian Railways announced the change after talks with the Railway of Moldova; for Ungheni residents it means a direct rail link every day — towards Chisinau and eastward — plus a new carriage for families with children. It is a different line from the one towards Iasi that is discussed in connection with electrification.
The government in Bucharest has approved the technical-economic indicators for electrifying the railway line between Iași and the border with the Republic of Moldova — the administrative step that opens the way to the design-and-build tender. It is the Romanian half of a cross-border project that will give the Republic of Moldova its first kilometre of electrified railway, right through Ungheni and over the 'Eiffel' bridge across the Prut. For a border-gateway district, it is the most concrete railway promise yet.
