Moldova, a nation of 2.62 million people, shares a 759-mile border with Ukraine to the latter’s southwest. It emerged from a troubled history in the 20th century having gained its independence in 1991 from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), only to be threatened again by Russian authoritarianism and imperialist aspirations as it enters the 21st. The country possesses a pro-Russian separatist territory to its east, a situation not unlike its neighbor, Ukraine, that is now in open conflict with Russia and also not unlike that in the Republic of Georgia, invaded by Russia in 2008 for similar reasons. The pattern is quite familiar and it underlines Russia’s intent to retake territory that history has somehow proclaimed belongs to it.
Moldova dates its origins as a recognized territorial entity to the mid-14th century, then known as the Principality of Moldavia. By the mid-16th century, it was overtaken by the Ottoman Empire which would come to control much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa until its defeat in World War I (WWI). One of a number of wars between it and Russia resulted in the annexation of Bessarabia in the eastern half of Moldavia by the Russian Empire under Tsar Alexander I in 1812. The Dniester River marked the eastern border of the annexed land with present-day Ukraine. Following Russia’s surrender to the Central Axis powers during WWI and the Russian civil war which ensued, Bessarabia gained independence in 1918 becoming the Moldavian Democratic Republic. It then joined neighboring Romania with which it was ethnolinguistically aligned. In 1922, the USSR, comprised of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the territories of the present-day republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, was established after Lenin’s Bolsheviks prevailed in Russia’s civil war.
By the early 20th century, a significant plurality of Romanian-speaking people (42%) remained on the east bank of the Dniester River in the neighboring Ukrainian SSR and so, in 1924, an autonomous territory was declared by the USSR as the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). The territory included present-day Transnistria (1,606 mi2) and the Podilsk Raion (2,733 mi2) of present-day Ukraine. This was a purely artificial designation by Soviet authorities to project a pro-Soviet propagandist sentiment across the Dniester River into Russia’s former possession, Bessarabia, which had become assimilated within Romania. Indeed, the Russians had further aspirations in the Balkans beyond simply Bessarabia. This would come to fruition in the coming conflict of World War II (WWII).
Between 1924 and 1940, under Stalin, the Moldavian ASSR was industrialized and witnessed a significant influx of Russian workers and their families. A famine occurred in 1925 and anti-Soviet uprisings arose necessitating the arrival of Russian troops. Thousands of peasants and factory workers were killed in the course of suppressing the unrest. The disastrous collectivization of farmland that had occurred in Ukraine and elsewhere within the USSR in the later 1920s and early 1930s led to the further death, by famine, of tens of thousands and the deportation of about 2,000 families to central Asia. In 1937-38, Stalin’s Great Purge within the USSR manifested in the Moldavian ASSR with the repression and execution of intellectuals espousing or just suspected of anti-Soviet or anti-Stalinist sentiment. Romanian influence upon the Moldavian language was suppressed and use of Latin script, as practiced in Romania, was forbidden replacing it with the more Russian-styled Cyrillic script. These actions were not unfamiliar during Stalinist times during which blatant Russification became a policy intended to eliminate national identities.
In 1939, prior to the outbreak of WWII, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact between Russia and Nazi Germany was signed and was to last ten years. It allowed Stalin’s forces to invade Poland from the east shortly after Hitler’s incursion upon Poland’s western border. The Russians also descended southward to reclaim Bessarabia in 1940. Certain lands with an ethnic Ukrainian majority and even some with a majority Romanian population were now annexed back within the Ukrainian SSR In that same year, the USSR proclaimed a new republic, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) which included the previously established Moldavian ASSR, specifically Transnistria. The Russian occupation of Bessarabia was temporarily voided in 1941 when Nazi forces invaded the territory and overtook the USSR in Operation Barbarossa. Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, the Moldavian SSR was reclaimed, becoming one of the 15 republics that would constitute the USSR until 1991. In the post-war aftermath, Stalin’s persecutions persisted with further deportations of thousands of Moldavian families to central Asia and Siberia, not unlike what had occurred in the Ukrainian SSR and in Crimea specifically.
After several decades of Russification, census figures for Transnistria showed a decline in the ethnic Romanian population from 44% to 33% between 1926 and 2015 while the ethnic Russian population rose from 14% to 34%. A Soviet military presence was reestablished in 1956, and was headquartered initially in Chisinau, the capital of the Moldavian SSR, moving to Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, in 1980. Moldavian nationalist sentiment began to manifest secretively as early as 1969 but was suppressed and then mollified by substantial investment by Soviet Russia within the republic. The tide of nationalism arose again in the late 1980s creating unrest, particularly in pro-Russian Transnistria. A Moldovan language was officially adopted in 1989 and the written language assumed its Latin alphabet form once more and away from its Russified version. By 1990, discussions were underway to secede from the USSR, prompting local conservative Soviet officials to proclaim the pro-Russian territory of Transnistria a separate “Pridnestrovian Moldavian SSR” (PMR). The latter was denied by Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who had already begun his plan for reform of the political and economic system of the USSR (i.e., “perestroika”).
In May 1991, the Moldavian parliament changed the name of its republic to that of Moldova after refusing to take part in the Soviet Union Referendum earlier in the year in which the organizational structure of the 15 republics of the former USSR would be decided. By then, the USSR was in the process of disintegrating and came to an end finally in December 1991. Moldova had already declared independence in August 1991. Not surprisingly, civil war broke out between Moldova’s government in Chisinau and separatists in the previously declared PMR, the latter supported by Russian forces. The war ended in 1992 but not before a considerable deployment of Russian artillery and troops. A peacekeeping force of Moldovan, Russian and Transnistrian troops was established under a Joint Control Commission. After a time, an Operational Group of Russian Forces (OGRF) within the territory was created and placed under the command of the Moscow Military District in 1995. The OGRF was said to serve with the Joint Control Commission but its actual mission has not been made entirely clear given the length of time it has remained in place. It does guard a large depot containing 22,000 tons of Soviet-era military equipment and ammunition in northern Transnistria. Several changes have occurred in its composition over time with the renaming and turnover of units, enough that a definitive count of Russian military personnel in Transnistria remains difficult to ascertain.
Transnistria itself is regarded by the United Nations as part of Moldova but was recognized by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in March 2022 as under military occupation by Russia. The latter had agreed to withdraw its forces from Moldovan territory in the 1994 Budapest Declaration of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) but didn’t do so and chose also to disregard the OSCE’s 1996 Lisbon Document on the matter. Russia promised again at the 1999 Istanbul summit of the OSCE to withdraw its forces from both Moldova and Georgia by the end of 2002 and again failed to do so. A reminder from the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentary Assembly was sent in 2008 without a response. In 2016, Russia announced it would have difficulty removing its armament from Transnistria through what was now considered to be hostile territory in Ukraine. This was, of course, of Russia’s own doing because of its military support of separatists in Ukraine’s eastern oblasts. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2018 requiring Russia withdraw its troops unconditionally from Moldova but again it refused to do so. After 28 years of intransigence, it has become clear to the civilized world that Russia has an agenda for its retention of a military force in Moldova quite apart from its “peacekeeping” mission.
Vladimir Putin has been the de facto leader of Russia from 2000 to the present, despite a meaningless interlude with Dmitriy Medvedev as President (2008-2012). Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the war that ensued has focused attention upon Moldova and, particularly, upon its pro-Russian separatist region, Transnistria, as an optional strategic launch site for Russian aggression upon Ukraine. However, history has shown there to be a determined interest in the reassimilation of Moldova in its entirety within the Russian sphere of influence. It was only recently that a pro-Russian Moldovan government under Igor Dodon had been toppled in 2021 by the pro-Western Party of Action and Solidarity of Maia Sandu. Candidate status for membership within the European Union (EU) was granted in 2022, recognizing the democratic reforms that were underway within the country. Along with the EU, the United States and NATO have taken an interest in Moldova’s security and have introduced measures to counter the inevitable attempts by Russia to overtake its government. Moreover, President Joe Biden met with Sandu in Poland recently to affirm the resolve of the United States in support of Moldova’s sovereignty.
More recently and, effectively, on-cue, Ukrainian intelligence uncovered a detailed Russian plan for a coup d’état to oust Sandu’s pro-Western government and deter Moldova’s looming democratic conversion. Russian, Montenegrin, Serbian and Belarussian nationals were apparently to enter Moldova to stir anti-government protests opposing reform and to destabilize government authority with the intent of ultimately installing a pro-Russian regime supported by Transnistrian separatists and the resident military force. Further affirmation of the plot came soon when Kremlin spokesman, Dmitriy Peskov, attempted to brush away the threat claiming “anti-Russian hysteria” and warning Moldova to be “very, very careful” – all quite reminiscent of his denials of the imminent attack by Russia upon Ukraine in 2022 when the Ukrainian government had leaned definitively to the West with the backing of its people.
A familiar pattern of subversion has become particularly evident in foreign affairs during Putin’s tenure as leader of the current Russian authoritarian regime. Distortion of truth and outright disinformation underlies the language of this government. Its operatives – Peskov, Sergei Lavrov, Dmitriy Medvedev – to name only a few, openly purvey propaganda, deny intent and proclaim all kinds of absurdity to undermine the reality that is unfolding. Many others, both within Russia and acolytes of Putin in the United States and elsewhere have taken up the practice to either benefit Russia, Putin himself or themselves alone. The rhetoric is repetitive and pervasive on social media, television networks and in government. Infiltration of government offices, support of pro-Russian opposition parties and use of agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (F.S.B.) and military intelligence, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleny (G.R.U.) add to the mechanics of the process. The latter agencies typically engage in organizing mass protests, governmental and political espionage, disinformation strategies and assassinations as further tools applied individually or in concert when required.
The process of Russification of neighboring countries has taken place over centuries but was amplified during the Soviet era of the 20th century. Predominantly Russian enclaves established themselves in certain territories and provided the substrate for separatist movements that have been effectively used by Putin in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the Republic of Georgia, in the Crimea and the eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, and now in Transnistria in Moldova, to establish quasi-autonomous republics within each nation. The ensuing chaos created reason to introduce “peacekeeping” forces, seemingly on a permanent basis, composed of Russian military with or without paramilitary elements, more to remind the respective governments of these ostensibly sovereign nations of Russia’s immediate presence. Any further apparent “provocation” against Russian troops or citizens of these newly established “republics,” as with a “false flag” operation, would serve as pretext for retaliatory invasion and overthrow of the government.
The Republic of Georgia is under scrutiny now by the EU after it was denied candidate status for membership in 2022 while granting the same to both Moldova and Ukraine. A poll in August 2022 identified 47% of Georgians desiring an entirely pro-Western foreign policy with another 31% wanting the same but maintaining good relations with Russia; only 2% were committed to a solely pro-Russian policy and another 7% wanting the same but retaining good relations with the EU and NATO. A full 75% have been supportive of EU membership; yet their former prime minister and current political powerbroker, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has remained ambiguous on the matter while his Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia Party has been decidedly pro-Russian in its rhetoric, its actions and policies.
Ivanishvili gained considerable wealth doing business while in Russia, managing to sell his assets at market value and returning to Georgia in 2012, all while retaining good relations within Putin’s kleptocracy. He became influential politically, founded his own party and became prime minister in 2012-13 on a platform that seemingly had pro-Western aspirations but also one that sought to normalize relations with Putin’s Russia. As subsequent party chairman, he maintained a neutral stance while allowing his party to steer a distinctly pro-Russian sentiment, counter to the wishes of the Georgian people. The current party chairman, Irakli Kobakhidze, has been noted for his negative comments toward both the West and Ukraine during the past year and, at the same time, Prime Minister Irakli Garabashvili rejected a request from the EU for judicial reform because of the undue influence Ivanishvili and other elites in his party had upon the judicial system.
Recent mass street protests erupted in the capital, Tbilisi, in opposition to a proposed parliamentary bill that would have required all agencies receiving more than 20% of their funding from foreign sources to register as foreign agents. It was seen as similar to a law in Russia that allowed the Kremlin opportunity to prosecute non-governmental organizations and independent journalists. The bill was retracted with the likely intent of redrafting it in a different form but protests continued to ensure that the bill be entirely dispensed with. President Salome Zurabishvili, an independent and not aligned otherwise with the Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgian Party, congratulated the protesters as speaking for the will of the populace. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, however, had a different but familiar take on the matter, accusing the West of fomenting unrest in Georgia much in the way he has accused it of supporting the Maidan protest that toppled the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine in 2014.
It appears that Putin’s notion regarding territorial possession within neighboring sovereign nations rests upon whether these same territories had previously been subjugated by the Russian Empire or the USSR. The idea of self-determination by a democratically elected sovereign nation seems to have no bearing upon Putin’s imperialist mindset or his chauvinistic attitude regarding Russia’s destiny. The repressive nature of Putin’s regime is well-recognized throughout the region and a popular will to resist it has manifested. It must be sustained to see an end to this protracted struggle.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2023. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
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