“Vladimir Putin does not forgive anything”: A new portion of compromising evidence on Dodon has been released in Moldova
President Igor Dodon may lose his status as Russia's main ally in Moldova due to his relationship with criminal oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc.
Former Prime Minister of Moldova Ion Struza stated this on air on the TV channel tvc21, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“He was just lucky that when the Russian Federation was looking for, excuse the expression, an agent of influence, due to the lack of another option, they settled on Dodon. But he greatly let down both President Putin personally and the Russian Federation with his behavior in June last year and his negotiations with Plahotniuc, about whom no one in the Russian Federation wants to hear,” said Struz.
We are talking about the negotiations that Dodon conducted with Plahotniuc in June 2019. They talked about creating a ruling coalition between the President's Socialist Party and the oligarch's Democratic Party. This happened at a time when Russia, through the mouth of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, had already publicly recommended that the socialists unite with the pro-European ACUM bloc.
When Kozak’s recommendations were implemented, offended and fled the country, Plahotniuc began uploading videos of negotiations with the Moldovan president. The first “episodes” were “released” last summer, Dodon then assured that he was simply luring the oligarch into a trap.
A year later, when the noise seemed to have subsided, an equally scandalous continuation followed. In the new “episodes”, Dodon’s assistant takes a black “bag” from Plakhotnik, presumably containing money, and the president himself criticizes Dmitry Kozak.
Dodon tells the oligarch how he “had a fight” with the Russian Deputy Prime Minister.
“I shouted at him before in the office, where there were other people next to him... But we must give credit where it’s due, he’s doing a great job. The negotiator is like this...” says Dodon.
Plahotniuc also recognizes Kozak’s talents and says that he “figured everything out for his country.”
Ion Struza believes that both subjects in the tapes demonstrated some kind of rustic naivety when they tried to outplay the Kremlin.
“Vladimir Putin does not forgive anything. The return of Rogozin’s plane is a point of no return for Plahotniuc (in 2017, the government controlled by the oligarch declared Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin persona non grata - ed.). It was completely naive to believe that anyone in the Russian Federation would support the government with the participation of Plahotniuc. Just stupidity,” said the Moldovan ex-prime minister.
According to his information, the United States, where Plahotniuc is currently hiding, is ready to expel the Moldovan criminal oligarch. Struzsa advises his compatriot to surrender to the Moldovan authorities.
“If he surrenders to the Russian authorities, things will be much worse for him,” he said, meaning that in August the Tverskoy Court of Moscow arrested the oligarch in absentia in a criminal case for creating a criminal community for the purpose of organizing drug trafficking into the Russian Federation.
As for Dodon, he, according to Struzsa, must win the upcoming presidential elections at all costs.
“Dodon has two problems. This is his relationship with Russia: the degree of trust that existed has exhausted itself. And secondly, we need to somehow explain the bags. This is not the last video he will receive,” Struza said.
Moldovan political scientist Sergei Ceban writes in RTA that the Kremlin has already taken with caution the plans of the Moldovan president to use his visit to Moscow for the Victory Parade as an occasion for negotiations on a loan and other economic issues
Dodon’s position is now extremely unstable. Plahotniuc, who harbors a grudge, is mercilessly buying up deputies of the ruling coalition. The stakes rose to a million dollars. If one more elected candidate falters in front of such a sum, the coalition will fall apart and the government will fall. And then Dmitry Kozak may again have to resolve the next Moldovan crisis.
“In the event of the weakening of the Moldovan leader and the removal of the Socialist Party from power, Moscow may return to the idea of a political reset and agree with the need to hold early parliamentary elections this year. It should be recalled that it was precisely this scenario that Dmitry Kozak insisted on last summer after the formation of the PSRM-ACUM coalition, apparently understanding what the preservation of the personal composition of the current Moldovan parliament could ultimately lead to,” Ceban wrote.
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