Moldova knows what it means to be threatened by Russia. Moscow has been destabilizing the small country for over 30 years. The opposition is supported, and pro-Russian separatists occupy an entire region. Moldova’s secret service now even fears a Russian attack.
In Bakhmut, Kreminna and Wuhledar, not only the fate of Ukraine will be decided, but also that of the Republic of Moldova. The President of the small Eastern European country, Maia Sandu, said in a ZDF interview last week: “As long as the Ukrainian army keeps the Russian army away from our border, there is no direct military threat to us.”
Moldova borders Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north and east. In no other neighboring country is the Russian war of aggression as present as in the bitterly poor mini-state. The government wants to join the EU, but at the same time Moscow has been destabilizing the small country for years. Moldova, only as big as North Rhine-Westphalia, resembles a powder keg. “In the Republic of Moldova, we are seeing a continuously revolving domestic political escalation of a conflict, and at the same time an escalation of the conflict with Russia. A key feature of this conflict is that it is being conducted in a hybrid way. This means that very different means are being used,” says Hannes Meissner, political scientist and risk analyst from the University of Vienna, in the ntv podcast “Learned again”.
Moldova gained independence more than 30 years ago after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And yet Russia still has a strong presence in the country. If only because of Transnistria, the small strip of land on the border with Ukraine, which has been a so-called de facto state since the end of the Soviet Union – with state structures, its own government and currency. However, it is not recognized by other countries. Under international law, Transnistria is still part of the Republic of Moldova.
The separatist region is financed by the Kremlin, which with 1,500 permanently stationed Russian soldiers ensures that Moldova makes no attempt to regain control of the area. Russia keeps Transnistria alive as a kind of branch office, thereby destabilizing Moldova, whose government is actually striving to join the EU.
The situation in Moldova has once again deteriorated significantly as a result of the Ukraine war. “Conflict and warfare allows Russia to have two fronts. Military, traditional warfare is possible. However, Russian troops are currently tied up in Ukraine. What President Maia Sandu said on ZDF that Ukraine is also protecting Moldova is from a military perspective understandable,” analyzes Meissner, who also works at the Competence Center for Black Sea Studies at the BFI Vienna University of Applied Sciences.
In theory, an attack on Moldova would make sense: from Transnistria, Russian troops could also put pressure on Ukraine in the southwest and target the Black Sea city of Odessa.
Nevertheless, a military intervention is very unlikely: On the one hand, Russia can hardly afford a second front at the moment, on the other hand, Moscow can keep the small state in its own sphere of influence without an attack. The mere existence of Transnistria currently stands in the way of EU membership.
Meissner currently considers a military escalation on the territory of the republic to be “unlikely”, but emphasizes that Russia has long been waging a hybrid war against the small Eastern European country. The resignation of the Moldovan government a few weeks ago shows what this can lead to. Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita pulled the ripcord in mid-February after just one and a half years in office – and with her the entire cabinet.
This did not come as a surprise to East European researcher Meissner. After three decades of high dependency on Russia, the country is in a “precarious state”. Inflation is high, at 27 percent in January. Energy costs have risen significantly more than in Western Europe. So far, Moldova has gotten 80 percent of its gas from Russia. Finding alternative energy partners is a difficult one for Moldova. “Moldova’s high dependency on Russia, especially with regard to gas and energy supplies, makes the country extremely vulnerable. And of course that is a dependency that Moscow has consciously controlled and that is now being used,” explains Meissner in the podcast.
The conditions were desolate even before the start of the Ukraine war. “In the past, the country was considered Europe’s poorhouse, a country where corruption, oligarchy and organized crime flourished. The country was hit by a large wave of emigration, with educated sections of the population in particular going abroad,” analyzes Meissner. The Moldova expert sees the country as severely weakened. “Russia can now use this weakness in a targeted manner.”
The pro-Russian opposition has used the problems in the country to create massive anti-Western government sentiment. The oligarch Ilan Shor in particular has organized mass protests with his Shor party. The very rich 35-year-old isn’t even in the country because he’s avoiding a prison sentence, but he’s still stirring up Moldovan politics. He stirs up the dissatisfied people, lets himself be connected to the demos via video. And Russia supports him in stirring up anti-government sentiment. Some demonstrators were even paid to take to the streets.
Despite the demonstrations and threats from Russia, the Moldovan parliament has again elected a pro-European politician as head of government. Dorin Recean has been in office for a good two weeks as the successor to Natalia Gavrilita. One of his main goals is to promote Moldova’s accession to the EU. Despite some reforms that have been initiated, this will still take years. The government program also expresses the wish that people want to “live in a safe world” in which “small states are respected”.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin does not seem to be fulfilling this wish. Just a few days after the new prime minister took office, the Kremlin chief annulled a decree on the Transnistria issue. “This 2012 decree stipulated that the Transnistrian conflict would only be resolved by preserving Moldova’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and neutrality. That was a pledge by Russia to preserve Moldova’s independence. By taking that back now, Moldova will symbolically deprived of its independence”, Meissner puts in when “Learned again”.
Russia will probably continue to rely on destabilization and threats – for example with allegations that Ukraine wants to invade Transnistria. The Russian Defense Ministry says Kiev wants to stage an invasion by Russian soldiers in order to have a pretext for its own invasion – an accusation that the Moldovan government dismisses as “misinformation”. According to the government, Russia is only concerned with spreading “panic and confusion.”
“Such information, which is spread in this case, should be placed in the context of conflict and warfare. What can help in such cases is an analytical questioning of who could benefit from such a scenario. And then it becomes clear that which cannot be in the interests of the Ukrainians,” said Meissner.
Kiev’s troops opening another front outside of Ukrainian territory? That is unthinkable in the current situation. In Russia, the motives are different, expert Meissner makes clear in the podcast. “Russia, and this is becoming increasingly clear, aims to reintegrate the post-Soviet countries into its own sphere of control.”
Despite the threats from Russia, little Moldova does not want to be defeated, but currently seems to be largely dependent on the course of the war in Ukraine. The country is tiny, has only 2.6 million inhabitants and hardly any military means to be able to defend itself against Russia in an emergency.
At least, and this is the positive thing, Russia’s decades-long hybrid war against Moldova is finally becoming visible to the rest of the world. Even US President Joe Biden addressed President Sandu and the Moldovan people directly last week when he addressed Warsaw after his visit to Kiev. “The Moldovan people are determined, they want to live in freedom and join the European Union. I proudly stand with President Maia Sandu and the freedom-loving people of Moldova.”
