Moldova: Ethnic Russian separatists ask Putin for help
Could Moldova become the next Ukraine? asked Ruslan Shoshin in Rzeczpospolita (Poland). Pro-Russian separatists in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria appealed to Moscow for protection last week, raising fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin could send in troops. That’s exactly the same scenario that unspooled in Ukraine before it was invaded: First, Russian speakers there rose up against Kyiv, then Russian troops marched in, ostensibly to assist them. Like Ukraine, Moldova is a former Soviet republic that has been turning ever more toward the West. Yet Transnistria, a sliver of Moldovan land that borders Ukraine, has been under the “de facto control of Moscow” since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Effectively autonomous ever since, it has functioned as a Soviet-esque microstate, with its own currency and its own hammer-and-sickle flag. For years, Moldova left Transnistria alone, but this year the pro-EU government in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital, demanded that Transnistrian businesses start paying taxes. Transnistria responded by begging the Kremlin for help in fighting “Moldova’s economic pressure.” It’s not a call for an invasion—yet. But escalation “cannot be ruled out.”
Some Europeans fear Russia could use Transnistria to attack Ukraine from the southwest, opening another front in the war, said Anna Zafesova in La Stampa (Italy). Transnistria has been “a gun pointed at the head of Moldova and Ukraine” ever since 1992, when it became “the seat of the first post-Soviet armed conflict” by waging an independence war against Moldova. And Russia does retain some 1,500 troops there to ensure the enclave remains a “frozen conflict.” Yet for Russia to use the enclave as a base in the Ukraine war would be all but impossible. Getting significant troops into Transnistria would require either flying over Ukraine, “where Russian planes have been shot down almost every day lately,” or crossing Romania, a NATO country. Putin knows “full well that Russia does not have the means to annex Transnistria,” said Florent Parmentier in Le Figaro (France). He’s just dangling the threat to “blackmail Moldova” into abandoning its bid to join the European Union. The goal is to turn Moldovan voters against pro-Western President Maia Sandu, who filed Moldova’s EU application in 2022. “The message from Moscow is this:” Dump Sandu, or we’ll take Transnistria.
The Transnistrians aren’t mere puppets of Putin, said Vitalie Calugareanu in Deutsche Welle (Germany). They have their own goals. Since the Ukraine war closed the border and cut off their smuggling routes, they’re now “100 percent economically dependent on Chisinau.” Sandu sees this as a chance to reabsorb the rebels, so she’s trying to force them to pay taxes and adopt Moldovan currency. The appeal to Russia is the Transnistrian attempt to get her to back off. Transnistria does this kind of “provocation and blackmail” every few years, said Laurentiu Plesca in Agora (Moldova). The reality is that Russian annexation would “destroy the Transnistrian oligarchs’ wealth,” and all sides know that. Moldova should call their bluff and “stand firm.”