It is a small strip of land that seceded from Moldova in the early 1990s after a war. Located on the western border of Ukraine, Transnistria is subject to heightened tensions. Thursday, February 23, Russia accused Ukraine of making “preparations” for an attack on this territory and threatens to “reply” to any military “provocation”.
Moldova, a former Soviet republic with European ambitions, has feared since the start of the war in Ukraine that it could be Moscow’s next target, and these concerns have been revived in recent weeks. President Maia Sandu, on the basis of documents intercepted by the Ukrainian secret services, accused Russia in mid-February of fomenting a coup to overthrow the power in place. In an interview with L’Express, Florent Parmentier, secretary general of CEVIPOF / Sciences Po and co-author of Moldova at the crossroads of the worlds (Éditions Non Lieu, 2019, with Josette Durrieu), explains why the likelihood of a military conflict in Transnistria is unlikely, while political destabilization of Moldova by Russia cannot be ruled out.
L’Express: According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Ukraine is in the process of massing “men and military equipment” near Transnistria. How to analyze these allegations of Moscow against kyiv?
Florent Parmentier : I don’t think that Ukraine’s priority is the reconquest of Transnistria. It could possibly do so if the conflict in the east of the country were much calmer. My guess is that the Russian leadership has accepted the idea of a fairly long war in Ukraine, which could last several years.
In this context, Moldova is one of those spots that we can shake up if we want to test the resistance of European public opinion. The idea for Moscow is to corner Ukraine and gradually cut it off from Western countries. The latter would then be less and less interested in defending the burden that the conflict in Ukraine represents, at the military and financial level. In other words, Moldova is a card that we can throw at one time or another to say: “Attention, the game is more global, it is developed from international public opinion and from trade of raw and agricultural materials.
It should be remembered that the resources of Moldova and Transnistria are very limited. There is an arms depot, in Cobasna, in Transnistria, but I don’t think the Russians expect these weapons from the Soviet period. In addition, Transnistria makes its security dependent on Moscow, there are links between the Transnistrian force structures and the FSB (Editor’s note: the Russian security services). But it makes its economic prosperity depend on Odessa in Ukraine (Editor’s note: multiple traffics pass through the neighboring Ukrainian port of Odessa), a little on the EU and less on Moscow, in order to ensure the sustainability of its regime.
It should also be remembered that this is not the first time that there have been concerns about the Transdniestrian situation. In April-May 2022, when several attacks and explosions had taken place in Transnistria, Oleksy Arestovych (Editor’s note: a former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky) had already raised the idea that it would be quite simple for Ukraine to get rid of of the approximately 1,500 Russian soldiers present in Transnistria. But his statements are often empty ideas. If the war spared Moldova, last April-May, the risk of an unwanted entry into the war of Chisinau existed at the time.
So we shouldn’t fear a military conflict on Moldovan territory?
I think the Moldavian leaders will be quite reluctant for Ukraine to take possession of Transnistria. First, because if that were done, there would be damage, whereas there has not been a single death in this conflict since July 21, 1992, at the time of the ceasefire agreement -fire signed between Transnistria and the authorities of Chisinau. If Ukraine is in difficulty in Bakhmout, if it feels that it is giving in, it can mobilize part of its forces towards Transnistria. but that would mean that it agrees to waste men, time and energy in the maneuver, even to reap international skepticism by launching this offensive.
Moreover, the Russian army is not deployed on the border with Transnistria and that changes a lot of things. For now, what protects Transnistria is the distance that separates it from the front line in Ukraine. We should therefore not expect an invasion of Russia as such. For that, it would be necessary for Moscow, which therefore has no territorial continuity, to send planes to carry out bombardments, which it has not done since the start of the conflict, and to bring in military troops . For the moment, we are very far from it. It should be remembered that on the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a year ago, the Russian soldiers present in Transnistria had not moved, neither on the Moldovan side nor on the Ukrainian side. Russia had not attacked from Transnistria.
The most probable for the future is that we continue to witness forms of destabilization and manipulation. The strongest sources of destabilization will come more from within Moldova than from outside and it will be interesting to see how this or that actor in the Moldovan political system could play into Russia’s hands.
Russian President Vladimir Putin revoked on Tuesday February 21 a 2012 decree which was to serve as a framework to allow the two parties to find a solution to the separatist question in Transnistria. Why is this announcement worrying?
The annulment of this decree is rather a setback in relation to the negotiation process. This process in the “5 plus 2” format has existed since the July 1992 ceasefire. It includes Moldova, Transnistria, Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) . The question of maintaining this specific Transdniestrian framework arises today.
From the moment when we note the end of this format because Ukraine no longer wanted to sit there, the question arises as to what are the levers that make it possible to prevent the rise of tensions. What would prevent Moldova from becoming a new Ukraine? In my opinion, there should be a clear presence of the European Union (EU) and the OSCE to explain what the situation is and what their position is on this subject.
Isn’t Russia’s goal above all to prevent Moldova from getting closer to the European Union and NATO?
We must link the lifting of this decree by Vladimir Putin with the question of NATO. This question is the ultimate casus belli, it is a red flag for Russia. If it is agitated with Moscow, it is with the aim of provoking a reaction from Russia.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu took less gloves than usual when discussing the possibility of getting closer to NATO. But there are two difficulties: firstly, it goes against the Moldavian Constitution, whereas article 11 lays down the conditions for the neutrality of the country. Secondly, according to the opinion polls available in Moldova, only a quarter of the population wants the country to join the Atlantic Alliance. Most Moldovans are much more concerned about the erosion of their standard of living than about NATO.
Moldova suffered inflation of 35% over one year. It was not possible to expect society to remain apathetic (Editor’s note: protests organized by the opposition pro-Kremlin party Shor took place, notably in Chisinau on February 19, with demonstrators demanding the authorities to paying their gas and heating bills). The fact that Moldovans are demonstrating does not seem reprehensible to me. On the other hand, if the Shor party recovers the popular mobilization and accompanies it in order to make it an uprising against the government of Maia Sandu, that is a problem. Nevertheless, if a pro-Russian power took power in Chisinau, the situation would be very complicated for him, as Moldova’s main trade is with the EU. With what resources could a government resulting from a pro-Russian demonstration live?