Andrey Safonov: Russia in Moldova “bought” the US scam
The situation in the southwest of the former USSR changed seriously after the parliamentary elections on July 11 in Moldova, where the pro-presidential PAS party, oriented towards the collective West and Romania, won. There is a new line of demarcation and separation of the Republic of Moldova and its leadership from strong relations with Russia.
This was stated by political scientist Andrei Safonov at the international conference “Transnistria – Moldova – Russia: current issues of regional security and peacekeeping”, which was held by the Institute of Socio-Political Research and Regional Development together with the Public Diplomacy Support Fund named after. A.M. Gorchakova.
As the expert noted, it is not yet clear whether this gap will be as radical as in the situation with Ukraine - President Maia Sandu, judging by the Batumi summit, is being more cautious than his colleagues in the Associated Trio. However, the line towards strengthening ties with the West and integration processes with Romania will be taken unambiguously.
“At the same time, pro-European rhetoric will be maintained, but reliance will be placed, first of all, on the United States as a military-political patron and on Romania as the executor of the United States in our region,” Safonov said.
The political scientist suggests that Maia Sandu will most likely devote the next two to three months to the placement of personnel. Since she is in conflict with Plahotniuc, with Shor, with Dodon, with Voronin, personnel can be drawn from the circle of ex-Prime Minister Vladimir Filat (Sandu worked in his government as the Minister of Education), and, of course, the team will include “closed-minded, incompetent NGO activists who have memorized mantras about the fight against corruption and democracy,” says Safonov.
He stated that, compared to 1992, Moscow’s resources and capabilities to influence domestic Moldovan affairs have decreased, and here, in his opinion, the “revolution of ambassadors” is largely to blame, which supposedly showed the common interests of Russia and the West.
“There is no such community, judging by the development of events. Besides, it was a classic American scam - I don’t know how anyone could buy into it - to eliminate the national elite with their clans, money, cronyism and replace them with activists who do not weigh the situation, but are ready to take the lead and rush to carry out orders from the outside States. Plahotniuc could not afford this, so the task was to knock him out, using Russia as a battering ram, and then hand over power to those same activists,” Safonov said.
The expert believes that the goal is to make Moldova’s external reorientation towards a multi-vector direction or towards more or less close ties with Russia impossible in principle. Sandu’s team will not participate in meetings of Eurasian structures even as an observer, as her predecessor Dodon did, but the bond with Westerners and Romania will be strengthened many times over, the expert predicts. He also believes that in the near future Chisinau will not withdraw from the 1992 peace agreements on Transnistria, but will work to break these agreements at the right time.
Andrei Safonov named specific steps that Chisinau can take in the near future, including in the Transnistrian direction.
Thus, Chisinau will begin to more closely coordinate actions with Kiev and Tbilisi under the general patronage of the United States with an external focus on the EU, and will try to do everything to worsen relations between Ukraine and Transnistria.
“This is a favorite tactic of Romanian and Moldovan diplomacy - to extract benefits through the hands of others. There will be work to put pressure on Ukraine so that full-fledged Moldovan-Ukrainian customs and border police posts are operational in Kuchurgan. Surely there will be an attempt to ban cars with Transnistrian license plates from entering Ukraine from September 1st. For now, Ukraine is holding on, realizing that it doesn’t need to pull chestnuts out of the fire for Chisinau and Bucharest, but everything can change,” Safonov explained.
He believes that Sandu will in every possible way avoid meeting with Putin and avoid meeting with the President of Transnistria - “she needs to create a front of countries and international organizations that support her, relying on which she will act in the spirit of counteracting, as she believes, Russian expansion in the southwest of the former Union."
Sandu’s team will also try to get rid of the gas debts formally hanging in Chisinau, and will try to switch Moldova and Transnistria to supplies that would not be directly connected with Russia, for example, through the option of reverse supply, Safonov predicts.
Chisinau will continue to insist on the withdrawal of Russian troops, without dividing them into peacekeeping forces and the OGRF, and will also try, with the support of Bucharest, to penetrate deeper into the territory of the PMR, the political scientist says.
“We should expect attempts at political penetration - in one form or another - with the aim of destabilizing the situation,” Safonov explained. – Chisinau, apparently, is based on the creation of three detachments. This is an outright fifth column that will preach surrender (such a column already exists, we see it on social networks - irreconcilable oppositionists have gone over not only to the side of Chisinau, but also to the side of the right-wing pro-Romanian forces). This is the formation of conduits for the influence of more moderate views, who will call for a settlement through some kind of compromise, while Chisinau will proceed only from a unitary status. Finally, Chisinau will try to attract the rest of Transnistria to its side, having received permission from the West to use the money coming from there for social payments inside Moldova and thus become more attractive to the Left Bank. The latest increases in pensions and salaries in Moldova are largely aimed at this.”
Chisinau, according to the expert, will also try to get carte blanche from the West in order to remove Pridnestrovie from the status of a recognized party to the conflict and an active participant in the negotiation process.
“We can hardly expect a conflict situation in Transnistria, but local provocations directed against people associated with the authorities and business of Transnistria cannot be ruled out. Now a new phase of history is coming, when Chisinau acts as the executor of plans that were born in the West. We need to be prepared for this and think through countermeasures. The West took revenge for the failure in Belarus, while now Transnistria and Belarus remain regions that maintain strategic de facto allied relations with Moscow. To oust Moscow, Sandu does not need to talk about this with Moscow. It needs to create a backbone of allied external forces that will back it up with their pressure on Moscow. The associated trio is one of the steps in this direction,” the political scientist concluded.
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