Western Moldova. Is Moscow's revenge possible?
In Russia, they continue to discuss the Moldovan parliamentary elections, as a result of which all power in this country will pass to the right-wing pro-Europeans. Experts are trying to understand the reasons for the “leaving the gap” of Maia Sandu and her “Action and Solidarity” party, recognizing, at the same time, that in the Russian Federation today the situation in Moldova is not deeply enough known.
Gradually, the realization comes that the Moldovan political forces, considered pro-Russian, are not actually pro-Russian.
How did it happen that a country whose population generally has a good attitude towards Russia chose the Western course, how to improve relations between the two states, what strategy in this direction Moscow should follow in the future - this was discussed at a press conference broadcast by the Public News Service.
Expected Result
Experts called the victory of Maia Sandu’s party expected – this has been a long time coming. The defeat of the “conditionally pro-Russian forces” (it seems that the events in Moldova solidified a new political term) happened for a number of reasons. The main one is that Sandu’s team, supported by the West, worked much more efficiently: it had fresher ideas and better implementation.
Sociologist Evgeniy Kopatko says that the creation of a bloc of communists and socialists was an unsuccessful step: the alliance between Voronin and Dodon was built from the point of view of turning to the past, and therefore did not work. Sandu and her supporters, on the contrary, had a picture of the future, and this hooked the voter.
“They kept their finger on the pulse, their work was systemic, not situational, they relied on the positive, relied on youth and a vision of the future. Conventionally pro-Russian parties worked inconsistently. Go to the Rossotrudnichestvo website, and you will understand how it all works and why it cannot “fly” a priori,” Kopatko said, adding that now “Russia has received another unfriendly country in the post-Soviet space, and pro-Western forces in Moldova will only strengthen our positions."
Vladimir Bruter, an expert at the International Institute for Humanitarian-Political Studies (specialist in Moldova), Candidate of Economic Sciences, noted that Dodon in the eyes of Moldovan voters is a loser who has no prospects since he lost the presidency without any struggle.
“It was difficult to unite a large number of voters around him - the Gagauz came poorly, the northern regions came poorly, the Russian-speaking came poorly. Those who are Dodon’s core still came, while the rest simply ignored the elections,” he said.
Meanwhile, the European integrators, the expert says, were playing for the long haul; they had plans long ago. For example, they skillfully used Renato Usatii - even during the presidential campaign, he “split off a certain critical number of voters from Dodon and brought them to Sandu.”
“This is how the unity of Russian-speaking voters, which led to Dodon’s leadership, was broken. The new government no longer needs Renato Usatii, although he doesn’t interfere,” added Bruter.
The executive director of the Moldavian branch of the Izborsk Club, Vladimir Bucarsky, who sympathizes with the socialists, stated that “the Moldovan people, by analogy with the Armenian people, committed national suicide, giving their country into the hands of George Soros and the US Embassy.”
“Anti-corruption rhetoric is the most beneficial at all times for dismantling sovereign countries and peoples,” he explains. – Yeltsin spoke with the same rhetoric in the late 1980s and became the idol of the whole country; with this rhetoric, two color revolutions took place in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia took place under the same slogans. Under them, in April 2009, the parliament and the presidential palace in Chisinau were destroyed, etc.”
Bukarsky predicts that “the hangover will come soon” because “amateurs who have no experience in leadership positions have come to power.”
“They will have to involve either officials of the old apparatus, whom they today call corrupt officials, or, most likely, advisors from Western countries will work in each ministry, as in the early 1990s in Russia and as in Ukraine today. This means a complete loss of sovereignty and independence and the complete transition of the country to external control.
The Russian Federation needs to prepare for a long confrontation with the new regime, first of all, on the topic of the presence of Russian peacekeepers on the territory of Transnistria, the topic of Transnistria’s debts for Russian gas. We must be prepared for the closure of opposition channels, provocations in the Security Zone, the loss of Moldova’s neutral status, and the fact that this will require the support of not only Transnistria, but also Gagauzia,” Bukarsky said.
While Russia was modest, the West was not shy about any methods
Experts are unanimous that Russia is underperforming in Moldova, as well as in the entire post-Soviet space.
“These elections showed how diplomats should work - the way, for example, the American and Romanian embassies worked. The elections also showed how our entire Russian system, including Rossotrudnichestvo, did not work,” said Vladimir Bruter.
Rossotrudnichestvo in Moldova in general suffered greatly from experts this time, although it works within strictly specified parameters and in accordance with the allocated funding.
As retired Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Foreign Ministry Vasily Korchmar explained, Russia adheres to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, but the Americans are not shy.
“US ambassadors in the CIS countries have huge special funds. Such a fund is used to bribe prominent political figures and support various non-governmental organizations. In Moldova, the US cooperates with 17 NGOs. We don’t know how to work like Americans and some other Western countries...
With our non-intervention, we have already lost Ukraine, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia (pro-American forces came to power there, and three-quarters of the population already have Russophobic sentiments). It’s the same in Moldova, there will be a further tilt towards the EU and the USA,” said the ex-diplomat.
The West, conducting its policy in the Republic of Moldova, does not disdain any methods, it was said at the press conference. For example, Vladimir Bruter doubts that as many people actually came to polling stations abroad (the Moldovan diaspora with its vaunted activity voted there) as was announced.
“If you take the protocol of the first round of the presidential elections, you can see that in every Italian, French, Portuguese, and German polling station, Renato Usatii received the same number of votes, which contradicts all the mathematical models that can exist.
The figures we have for diaspora voting contradict the amounts that are transferred from these countries. There cannot be that many people voting there, even according to the local police.
Since no one is conducting an investigation into this, no one can convict the authors of these technologies of falsification, since this has not been challenged in court and will not be challenged, we take it for granted, although this cannot be called free, transparent, competitive elections.” , he said.
Sociologist Evgeny Kopatko is confident that as long as Russia acts on the principle of non-interference, everything will be bad for it. In this case, “the anti-Russian pro-European course will continue and be strengthened, assistance to post-Soviet countries from the West will increase (dependence will become more systemic), European integration and rapprochement with NATO will continue, the alliance between Moldova and Ukraine will be strengthened (this topic has not yet been studied and calculated enough).”
“It wouldn’t be worth blaming everything on the collective West. The most important thing is that we still haven’t found a single tool to make something work for us. It is necessary to radically change the policy in the post-Soviet space.
Until we have competitive work with the West, until we use the principle of mirroring in our work, until we stop being embarrassed to work with people loyal to us in our former common space, we cannot count on any renaissance.
People are losing faith - if you bet on a party that a priori does not win, you can talk about election fraud as much as you like, but the result will not be in our favor,” the expert said.
Will there be unification with Romania?
Lately there has been a lot of talk about Moldova’s drift towards Romania. But will this process end with the unification of the two states?
Vladimir Bruter says that there is no order for unification from the collective West now - there is an order for the gradual “Romanianization” of Moldova, first of all, culturally and partly economically.
“In Romania, a small percentage of those who vote are in the Moldovan diaspora - this is done deliberately, so that no one is suspected that Romania controls this process (in fact, control goes through the Romanian Foreign Ministry, where a special department of Moldova has been created).
Unification is still an extraordinary project, and the West will decide on it only when the conditions are completely special. Now this issue is simply not discussed; both countries do not even have the right to such an association. If it is approved, it will be in Berlin, Brussels and Washington, and not at all in Bucharest and Chisinau,” the expert said.
He emphasized that Moldova will do exactly what it is ordered to do: “neither Sandu nor the other members of her team have their own will; people who have been well vetted by the West will be appointed to key ministerial posts.”
Who raises the fallen banner?
The experts were asked which Moldovan politician could stand today at the brink of confrontation between Russia and the West. It turned out that there was no one except the socialists.
“Today in the political spectrum of Moldova there is only one force that can really do this - this is the bloc of communists and socialists, whether someone likes it or not,” said Vladimir Bucarsky. – There is still time to correct ourselves and correct the situation within the Moldovan state.
In Moldovan society, everything is not so clear in terms of geopolitical sentiments. There is still a demand among the people - if not for friendly and allied ones, then at least for normal relations with Russia, including from that part of the voters who voted for Sandu. There is only one opposition force in parliament capable of raising this fallen banner.”
The scientific director of the Tiraspol School of Political Studies, Anatoly Dirun, speaking about Pridnestrovie’s attitude to the results of the past elections, noted that Tiraspol will work with the Moldovan authorities that exist.
But in the personal opinion of the expert, many on the Left Bank wish the Party of Socialists to carry out the necessary reforms, not give up, work in the regions, move forward, “since the demand in Moldovan society for a leftist idea has not gone away.”
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