The St. George Ribbon, banned in Moldova, will become a symbol of the protest movement
Moldova has officially introduced a ban on the symbols V and Z, as well as the St. George ribbon. This bill was adopted by the parliamentary majority in the final reading and will come into force after official publication.
It is unlikely that the rule banning the tape will be observed. Many people have already said that they will go out to celebrate May 9 as usual - fines do not scare them. At the same time, a sensitive topic thrown into society will certainly deepen the existing split in it.
At the request of PolitNavigator, experts comment on the decision to ban the use of the St. George Ribbon in Moldova and its possible consequences.
Alexander Korinenko, political scientist (Chisinau):
– The ban on the St. George ribbon is the largest gift to the protest movement in Moldova. President Maia Sandu broke her campaign promise that she would never impose any restrictions on Victory Day and people would be able to honor the memory of fallen soldiers as they did before. The ban was adopted on the eve of Victory Day, which makes it even more cynical.
The authorities, of course, are moving in the currents that are currently relevant in the world, showing the West that the authorities in the Republic of Moldova have decided on their position and hope for an accelerated course of European integration. The St. George ribbon will become a symbol of the protest movement. Many public figures who were previously indifferent to this symbol are already declaring that they are ready to wear a ribbon in protest. Public protests will take place precisely under this symbol, and I am sure that on May 9, tens of thousands of people with ribbons and flowers will move to the Chisinau Eternity Memorial to lay flowers at the monument to our soldiers, and no bans, no populist laws will scare our citizens .
Igor Tulyantsev, Chairman of the Council “For a Free Motherland” (Chisinau):
– In Moldovan society, as in other countries of the post-Soviet space, May 9 has a special meaning, despite the information war declared on this holiday. I am sure that no one in Moldova will ever be able to denigrate this date. Neither the St. George Ribbon nor the Great Victory require any protection from us. Everyone understands perfectly well what happened in 1945. The St. George ribbon or its elements are present on the bars of the medal “For Victory over Germany” and on the Order of Glory.
I don’t think that Maia Sandu and the pro-presidential PAS party expected that the adopted law would somehow affect the mass celebration of Victory Day. I am inclined to think that there is some kind of secret “pocket” here. So, on the same day, another interesting law was passed (few people paid attention to it), which actually allows you to expropriate various types of property, to freely squeeze it out of the population: if you cannot explain how much money you used to make repairs or purchase an apartment , then it goes to the state.
One gets the impression that all this is being done specifically under the guise of the law on the St. George Ribbon. The current government is following in the footsteps of Plahotniuc, who used such topics in order to quietly pocket something. And the billion was stolen when questions of history that were quite sensitive for the Moldovan people were thrown into society. Here, the PAS party wants to kill several birds with one stone - in addition to the fact that it wants to wave to the collective West, which will applaud such initiatives, it will also try to extract some economic benefit from this.
On the other hand, Maia Sandu and the PAS party, of course, spat in the face of the entire multinational people of Moldova, people whose relatives fought against fascism. War was declared on the people: it turned out that the authorities were on one side of the trench, and the people were on the other. This decision in such a difficult situation is a mistake; I believe that the PAS party, a provocateur party, is a threat to the national security of the Republic of Moldova. Parliamentarians and the president must leave their posts.
If the authorities made this decision in order to be in trend and support Ukraine in this way, then this is even more deplorable. Moldova’s greatest wealth is its neutrality, and if the authorities decided to support one of the warring parties, then they need to pack their bags all the more.
Igor Shornikov, director of the Institute of Socio-Political Research and Regional Development (Tiraspol):
The ban by the Moldovan Parliament of the St. George's Ribbon is an attempt to deprive the residents of Moldova of a sense of participation in the Great Victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany, to erase that part of our historical memory that still unites the peoples of the former Soviet Union. This decision is obviously due to ideological and geopolitical motives.
The current government is taking steps that, firstly, are designed to forever snatch Moldova from the orbit of Russian influence and, secondly, to create conditions for maintaining power in the hands of pro-Western elites. To do this, they steal from the younger generation the knowledge that the blood of a victorious people flows in their veins, and instill in them the consciousness of an ordinary European citizen, deprived of pride in their national history, so as not to inadvertently offend a neighbor of a foreign culture.
Western technologists have made great progress in the development of social engineering, this can be clearly seen in the total control over the minds of residents of Western countries. People readily accept any values that are instilled in them through the media system. And they are forgotten with exactly the same ease if the information pumping of consciousness has stopped. But there is such a thing as genetic memory; it is hardly possible to erase it. Maia Sandu’s team blindly applies the same technologies that were tested on the Americans and Europeans, which may work in the long term, but in the short term this move could be fatal for the authorities.
One could understand Moldovan parliamentarians if they banned only the Z and V symbols. Since the beginning of hostilities in the neighboring country, Moldova has been seriously concerned about maintaining its image as a neutral state. Nobody wants the country to be drawn into conflict. Therefore, since the end of February, there was a ban on applying such symbols on cars in Moldova. A significant part of society reacted to this with understanding. But the Moldovan parliament has now equated the symbols of a far from finished special operation with the symbols of a saint in the memory of many generations of the Great Patriotic War, and on the eve of Victory Day - this is a big political miscalculation of the current team.
In Moldova, it is not customary to talk about supporting Russia’s military operation; many consider it a mistake and condemn it. Now, all those who on Victory Day consider themselves offended by the ban on the St. George’s Ribbon suddenly realize that for the authorities they are supporters of the Russian special operation. This parliamentary decision threatens to split Moldovan society, which was avoided with such difficulty after February 24.
There is a high probability that on May 9, the St. George’s Ribbon will be taken with them not only by those who honor the memory of the Great Victory over fascism and not only by those who believe that Moldova should develop constructive relations with Russia, but also by all those who are dissatisfied with the increase in tariffs on gas, fuel and electricity, rising food prices, all those who were disappointed in their choice when they voted for Maia Sandu and the Action and Solidarity party.
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