Both are popular.
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Yeah, it is, at least in Romania, but probably in R. Moldova too. Our Gypsies usually have Russian as their native language believe it or not.
Here's the proportion of Gypsies in each county in Romania, who can speak the Roma language
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...omania.svg.png
maybe i didn't read you right,
but the amount of Russian use in Chisinau is incomparable with the handful of gypsy words Romanians understand.
how many Moldovans understand Russian? maybe half, I don't know.
but certainly no Romanian understands Romani, none.
Gypsies in Russia, from what I've heard myself, use a mixture of Romani and Russian among themselves. They're not full Russian monolinguals.