Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Galuzin, has warned Moldova of “a military scenario” if it attempts to resolve the problem of the breakaway Transnistrian region by force. “We are extremely concerned about such a possibility and have always made it clear that attempts to resolve the Transnistrian issue by force are counterproductive. We expect Chisinau to understand what a military scenario could mean for Moldova,” Galuzin told the Russian daily Izvestia on Thursday. The minister said that any actions that pose a threat to the Russian military, or to fellow citizens [of Transnistria], would be “considered by Moscow, in accordance with international law, as an attack on Russia”.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday told the Russian Duma that Russia will defend its citizens in Moldova from any alleged danger from the government in Chisinau or its US and EU backers. “We will do everything we can to reverse this trend to resume the political process. After all, we have 200,000 citizens living there, and, of course, we are concerned about their fate and will not allow them to become victims of another Western adventure,” Lavrov said.
Russia allegedly has 220,000 Russian citizens in Moldova, most of them in the breakaway region. Russia used such rhetoric against Ukraine before the February 24, 2022 military invasion, allegedly against the “Nazi” leadership in Kyiv, which it said the West controls.
Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War, ISW, a US non-profit, has issued an analysis that says the Kremlin is preparing a hybrid operation in Moldova, similar to the one it used before its invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and in 2022, which could justify a possible escalation of the conflict in the region. The ISW said Kremlin officials are trying to create informational conditions to justify a possible Russian move to destabilise Moldova and prevent its integration into the EU.
The secessionist leader of Transnistria, Vadim Krasnoselky, supported the statements of Russian officials on Thursday and said that Moldova should not take advantage of the difficult situation around Transnistria to “spread rot” on the Transnistrian people. “We must try all possible negotiation platforms and not interrupt the dialogue …]The conflict in Transnistria is the path to world war,” Krasnoselsky said.
Former Moldovan Defence Minister Anatol Salar said on TV on Thursday that Russia will do everything possible through a hybrid war this year to ensure the country’s pro-European President Maia Sandu does not win a second term. “It is important for Russia to take control of Moldova and block Ukraine from the western flank, then to block Moldova’s collaboration with Romania and Moldova’s accession to the EU,” said Salaru.
Comment: Two years ago, the Kremlin most likely saw Transnistria as the western border of a new, greater Russia. Those plans came to naught and I don’t see any future operation, hybrid or not, coming to fruition. The Kremlin is claiming that Moldova’s drift to the West and particularly the recent imposition of taxes and tariffs of goods going to and from Transnistria is a blatant attempt to economically strangle Transnistria. There may be something to that, but it is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that is driving Moldova deeper into the EU fold.
TTG
https://emerging-europe.com/news/in-transnistria-much-ado-about-nothing/
Last throw of the dice for the neocons? Somehow I doubt it. There’s always Georgia and I saw Mrs Nuland was in Mongolia recently. Whether she’d taken her cookies with her wasn’t reported but knowing Mrs Nuland she probably had a go.
What the neocons don’t understand is that the more they try to destabilise Russia and environs the more forceful the Russian reaction will be. We saw the attempt to destabilise Kazakhstan just before the SMO and the Russians squashed that flat. Stirring things up in Transnistria could also be a case in point. At some time the Russians might take Odessa, 101st Airborne or not, and us bringing Transnistria to the boil could well make that sooner rather than later.
We are at war with Russia. The recent revelations from Scholz and from the German General holidaying in Singapore make that more and more evident. This is moving from a proxy “look no hands” war and is getting ever closer to the real thing.
But the Euros do not have the means to conduct a real war and the Americans simply don’t have the forces over here. I’m seeing enough references from American professionals to the US “boutique army” to make me doubtful whether the Americans still have the forces available for a European land war anyway.
It really is time, if only for the sake of the Ukrainian PBI, to put this thing to bed. Let the Euros segue into the Cold War II they’re so keen on and let the neocons go after other game. Barring mushroom clouds this show is over.
Speaking of destabilization on the Russian periphery, let’s not forget Armenia.
I don’t understand Pashinian (Nikol) and the majority of Armenians who have voted for him for 6 years.
Armenia is rapidly heading towards an American platform, almost empty of Armenians in a country that will have lost the eastern part of its territory.
A hint: some of Baku friends say that Armenia is the Azerbaijan of the West, or will become so.
Armenia’s history is first glorious then tragic. The tragedy to come will have been made possible by the very hand of the Armenians. The buddies of the East and the South will only have been accomplices.
d74,
Some Nuland type from the USA has gotten to the Armenians and convinced them to do the wrong thing. The Armenians living in the Republic of Armenia are not the smart to mythological proportions Armenians that lived throughout Turkey and into Syria and Lebanon, like my grand parents and relatives. The Republic Armenians had their minds addled and wills softened from years of institutionalization under the Soviets. They love handouts and promises of effortless future gain via government, just like our own democrats. So easy prey for the US state dept and the CIA.
EO,
Of course it’s not the last throw of the neocon dice and the fat lady hasn’t sung yet, not by a long shot. Plenty more cookies to bake.
This is one of the costs of the alleged “slow grind” strategy” I keep on about. It’s only only going to become more costly. Russians not = 4D chess players. Just bad at fighting war. Stupid even.
Eric – it’s costing us a bit too:-
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-boost-ukraines-artillery-reserves-with-245-million-munitions-package
12 billion recently, quite a lot since 2014 and a lot in the munitions we flew over just before the SMO. That’s not counting the cost to us of the financial sanctions we impose: our finances are stretched and the City helps keep us more or less solvent.
Though one man I know in reinsurance says business is still booming so maybe the sanctions aren’t hitting us that much directly. Reassuring if so but we do half our trade with Europe and Europe’s engine, Germany, is certainly hit by those sanctions. They sneeze we catch a cold.
The sanctions were a gift to Russia. Meant they had to develop their own industries and they now have a more viable economy. They have not similarly benefitted us and will probably do more harm to us in the future.
12 Billion pounds plus towards what I have regarded as a criminal enterprise from the start. And a failed one as was also evident from the start. The potholes in the road round my way are the worst I have ever seen them and that’s only the least of the problems we’ve allowed to build up for lack of money.
Like you, I’m also worried about the Russian “slow grind” you mention. The longer this goes on the greater the chances of the Euros doing something stupid. Or your neocons. We’re already directly responsible for the shelling of a nuclear power station and it was only Shoigu phoning around the Foreign Ministers that put paid to the Ukrainians fooling around with dirty bombs.
So it’s a balance. The Russians move too fast and there’s a danger they’ll set the psychos in Washington and Berlin/Brussels/Westminster off. Too slow and it gives the psychos more scope for such tricks. All one can do is hope the Russians get the balance right. And, of course, drive carefully around the potholes.
EO
“The UK will spend £245 million throughout the next year to procure and invigorate supply chains to produce urgently needed artillery ammunition for Ukraine.”
Procure and revigorate will take time.
Even if theses 245 millions were used to buy shells, it’s no more than 50 000 shells, less than a week of russian consumption.
EO,
“move too fast and there’s a danger they’ll set the psychos in Washington and Berlin/Brussels/Westminster off. ”
The psychos are already set off – they wouldn’t be more set off if Russia moved quickly.
Eric – North Stream was one indication that our side is going all out. The shelling of the ZNPP another. That was really alarming. Psycho stuff, and it went on for long enough and was publicised enough for it to have been the Western politicians who gave it the go-ahead. There have been other indications:-
As far as the UK goes it looks likely that British SF were involved in the “Commando Raids” on the ZNPP. Unless it’s just propaganda we’re heavily into similar activities up round Belgorod. It was officially confirmed we were involved in the naval base on the Sea of Azov and we’re doing much the same in Odessa.
More generally, the Ukrainians confirmed a while back that Western personnel were doing the target selection and ISR guidance for the HIMARS. Those were used on Donetsk civilians, the ZNPP and reportedly on the Azov prison camp.
The German indiscretions confirmed what until then had been supposition or rumour on other technical and personnel assistance the Ukrainians were getting. There’s also a huge question mark over the Bucha atrocities and given there was plenty of atrocity theatre in Syria there could be similar here.
So there’s enough information there for us to be worrying about what we’re getting up to in Ukraine, and much of that hard information. With that record it’s even more worrying now that even the most optimistic can see that the war is going against us.
Like all administrations the US administration is faction ridden – I’ll bet the US President didn’t authorise the attempted destruction of the Tabqa Dam that was reported in the US press a while back. I’ll also bet that the disastrous half-hour delay in implementing the deconfliction arrangements in Deir Ezzor wasn’t something dreamed up in the White House. Factions or individuals within factions can and do play their own hand; we know that quite a lot was done or not done that should have been done that Trump wasn’t aware of at the end of his Presidency. The German military looks to be getting ahead of Scholz in that respect as well and the French military have a lot of scores to settle.
The Euros are in a flat spin now that it looks as if the US might be blowing cold, and some factions in the US too. These are just the conditions in which someone or other on our side can pull some trick that the politicians will then be forced to back up. If you listen to Pistorius & Co. they wouldn’t be averse to escalation anyway. I think the Euros would like something to happen that would pull the US back in.
Dangerous dog scenario, I used to term it a year or so back. No sudden movements to provoke it. Back off carefully. Mad dog scenario now, and the Russians would do well to take it steady.
And Eric, the decisive end to the thing that you and I would like to see would be casualty heavy for the Russians in any case. They’re going to have to play it the way they’re playing it and as said all we in the West can do, given that we do seem to have landed ourselves with psychos in our respective governments, is hope for our sakes as well as theirs that they play it right.
English,
What’s this “our” side? The US is not at war with the Russian Federation. If His Majesty’s government has committed acts of war against Russia there is zero obligation on the United States to defend your country if they choose to respond in kind.
News flash – Victoria Nuland is retiring from State Dept! (Yay, maybe)
I hate the fact that we (USA) seem to be politically and psychologically locked into playing the “Great Game” with Russia. The winner of that game will be China and other countries that cooperate in building infrastructure to economically integrate Eurasia (rather than wasting more resources and lives fighting over lines drawn on the globe).
For at least a year, I’ve been predicting that the lower Dniepr will be the new boundary between Ukraine and Russia. Some (pro-Russian?) sources (MoA, Naked Capitalism) expect Russia to take Odessa and the whole Ukrainian Black Sea coast, but I think Putin would gladly forego that (and the casualties it would require) for other concessions (like no NATO membership for Ukraine, Georgia, etc).
But if things heat up in Transnistria, Russia is far more likely to go for Odessa. I suspect that they could (eventually) take that region, but only at great cost. It sounds like most (?) of the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been sunk (by British weapons… there’s that Great Game thing again), so they prolly couldn’t pull off an Inchon/Anzio attack. And getting major forces across the lower Dnieper won’t be easy (though the effects of the collapse/destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam have stabilized by now).
So, the deeper question for me here is, who’s driving this new piece of The Game? Is Russia pimping new tensions in Moldava/Transnistria, to (1) justify the expense of taking Odessa, or (2) convince Ukraine to settle for (roughly) current boundaries to avoid losing the entire Black Sea coast? Or are US NeoCons poking The Bear again? Or are Moldavan politicians drinking enough of our Kool Aide to imagine that they can poke The Bear on their own?
I hate the Great Game, and I’m sure glad that I don’t live anywhere near where it’s being played.
Elkern,
If Russia takes Odessa the neocons and Euros are going to fly off the handle in a spastic fit of bat sh!t crazy. They will be psychologically capable of doing something in the realm of civilization terminating kamikaze madness.
Eric Newhill,
Russia is having trouble trying to take Krynky, much less recrossing the Dnipro and making their way to Odesa. If anyone is flying off the handle in a spastic fit of bat sh!t crazy over this, they’re in the Kremlin.
Yeah, the very slow pace of Russian advance is largely why I’m skeptical of the maximalist projections (Kharkiv! Odessa! Kiev! Lvov!) by pro-Russian/Ukraino-skeptic sources.
OTOH, slow pace *is* consistent with Russia prioritizing destruction of Ukrainian forces, so maybe it’s a strategic choice, not just incompetence. Or they could be pulling some maskirova thing, or waiting for better (or worse!) weather, who knows.
TTG,
I don’t think the Russians can take Odessa either. I don’t think they’ll try unless they’re totally crazy. Just saying if they did the Euros would flip out and do something they shouldn’t.
Russian war fighting ability has not impressed me at all.
TTG – that view also expressed in a fragment I’ve just picked up:-
“I’m stumped as to how that can be possible as I see no way an amphibious/air-assault operation can be carried out, and the only way Odessa will be taken is from the north, after coming down from Kiev.”
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-22724-desperate-globalists?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
That’s talking about Odessa. Presumably the same applies to Transnistria?
But I’ve no business fussing about stuff like that. It looks to this amateur as if the Russians have set their goal and have multiple plans to deal with multiple possibilities of reaching it. If Kiev collapses administratively. If the Ukrainian army crumbles. If it doesn’t. If NATO forces come in. If .. If.. If….
Makes no odds. Their goal is the neutralisation of Ukraine to prevent it ever again being used as a NATO base for SF fun and games Budanov style within Russia, or for “look no hands” missile attacks into Russia. I stuck my neck out after the failure of the Istanbul talks and thought that gaol could only be achieved by Ukrainian capitulation. Maybe wrap it up somehow to save face for President Biden but amounting to the same thing.
It seems even more unlikely now that after all this the Russians will allow remnant Ukraine to be the “zone of destabilisation and insecurity” that Sleboda feared. (and still fears). Therefore the interest for me, as a European who likes the place still and would like to see it prosper, is what happens afterwards.
Will the Russians impose reverse sanctions to put a spoke in the wheel for Stoltenberg and Scholz, and the other trusty warriors of Europe looking forward to Cold War II? Or will they allow the trusty warriors to ring their Western border with nukes and missiles and troop exercises and just decide to live with it? .
This amateur hasn’t the faintest idea. But it matters, which option they choose as their next goal after Ukraine.
EO,
If Russia neutralizes Ukraine – and if I had to bet on it, even with Russia dragging its heals and NATO scheming increasingly crazy schemes, they will – what has been gained? They still have NATO on their borders.
Not having NATO on their borders cannot be a Russian objective because anyone can look at a map and see that NATO is going to be on Russia’s borders no matter how far west they push those borders.
Now if you are in the Martyanov/Johnson/Ritter camp and believe that Russia – as a 4D chess master – is going to cause NATO to economically and socially destroy itself to the point where it no longer exists, thus removing NATO from its borders, then all I can do is wish you happy trails as you ride your flying unicorn off into the magic sparkle rainbow sunset.
I remember when, over a year ago, the MJR camp was proclaiming, confidently, that Europe was going to simultaneously starve, freeze and plunge into an economic depression of historic proportions. A telling fantasy on their part. Freud would have a hay day with it.
What is better?
Your enemy at yours doorsteps or many miles away ?
Aleksandar,
So Putin is full of BS when he says that the Donbas is now Russian territory, full of ethnic Russians and that attacking it is an attack on Russia, blah blah, blah?
In reality any newly acquired in Ukraine is just a buffer and trip wire?
So Russia is going to have to support a large occupying force in Ukraine, into perpetuity, in order to keep NATO many miles away? Ukraine will just be some sort of no-mans land? Is that what you’re envisioning? Putin doesn’t say any of that – he’s not that lost in fantasy.
Eric
“Not having NATO on their borders cannot be a Russian objective because anyone can look at a map and see that NATO is going to be on Russia’s borders no matter how far west they push those borders.”
They will have stopped further NATO expansion to the east.
Khazakstan, Armenia and others now know that if they want NATO they have to fight for it. It is a paradox of sorts since they all claim they want NATO membership so they can be safe when in fact the opposite is true.
NATO has expanded so much that being a part of it brings with it an increasing chance of being drawn into a conflict with states armed with nuclear weapons.
Macron, Ursula and other cretins still think Russia is bluffing.
Their group think and arrogance blinds them to the reality that we are fast transitioning from proxy to direct conflict. I don’t think they will realize their mistake before the first nukes
start going off.
Eric – According to my least favourite paper, the UK Daily Telegraph, the EU’s share of world trade has gone from a third to a seventh. Even the Telegraph wouldn’t put a figure like that out unless it bore at least some relationship to the truth. We can assume for working purposes that it does.
It’s not quite like that because we Brits are no longer in the EU, so that skews the figures. Also relative figures like that don’t mean much – if I’m still prosperous, what does it matter to me if my poor neighbour suddenly becomes prosperous too?
Except. Our European prosperity did to an extent depend on keeping our neighbours poor. We could, for example, get minerals cheaper from Africa, or impose on them inequitable trading arrangements, by keeping some African governments under our thumb. Or getting the Americans to do it for us because they have bigger thumbs.
We used to get what we wanted out of poorer countries by the simple device of conquering them. Then they didn’t have much choice but to give us what we wanted. But that was in the days of the big European empires. The European “Scramble for Africa”, more or less regulated under Bismarck at the Berlin Conference, was a late example of that. Those days are of course over.
In post-colonial times we got what we wanted out of the poorer countries by more indirect means – removing recalcitrant governments and replacing them with more amenable ones. You Americans do that too – in fact if we examine Syria for example, we did it or tried to do it together. French and British commercial interests were best served by our getting rid of Assad using mostly American power and then getting at what we wanted in Syria.
I’m not entirely sure but I think those days are over too. They are in many parts of the planet anyway. The poorer countries are telling us to push off and are making no bones about it.
We are witnessing therefore the end of some five centuries of European and then Western world domination and all that went with it.
This doesn’t matter so much to you Americans because the US is still a country that can feed and heat itself and it is also rich in mineral resources. Not so for Europe, so that loss of the ability to impose ourselves on poorer countries does mean that we become in absolute, not relative terms, less prosperous.
It doesn’t have to be that way. If we can’t get what we want from poorer countries with the gun, or by destabilising their governments, we could always try selling them stuff to get what we want in return.
Except that we’re deindustrialising by means of outsourcing. My own country has taken that the furthest but the most important country in Europe, Germany, and by far the most successful, has also been quietly going down that road for the last twenty years and more to my knowledge. And as for the service industries we are often very good at – the poorer countries are gradually finding they can do that for themselves!
So we have less and less “stuff” to sell to the poorer countries in order to get what we want from them. Looked at from that perspective that drop in the Telegraph figures from a third to a seventh of world trade doesn’t look so comfortable for us Europeans. That, too, against the background of socially and economically disruptive mass immigration – itself sometimes resulting from our destabilisation attempts across the globe – and largely dysfunctional internal governments.
This has been the position for us across the Atlantic for the last few decades. Quietly festering away in an inevitable decline. I expect we’d eventually have pulled out of that decline in the end, or at least accommodated to it more successfully. There were signs all over Europe that We the People were beginning to work out what was wrong and starting to think about how to put it right. Faint signs, but could have been promising eventually.
Then came the bombshell of February 24th 2022.
Argument still rages in the West about that. Some say, I’m one of them, that we provoked the Russians. Some say not. Either way, the upshot is that we’re at war with them. All sorts of theories why. The Russians want to recover past empire. Or, we wanted to get at Russian mineral resources – there’s a quote from Condoleeza Rice that indicates that and several other quotes too. Or, our politicians wanted us scowling at the Russians and not at them. Or, my favourite theory, it was time for the White Tiger to stir itself again in Europe. Or, Rand Corporation, it was just FAFO resulting from our pushing it just a little too much.
But the arguments and theories don’t matter as much as the results of that day in February 2022. Those results were summed up by Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy /Vice-President of the European Commission.
The twin pillars of the European economy, Borrell explains, were access to cheap Russian raw materials and fossil fuels and full access to the global economy. As far as we could we cut ourselves off from both.
Throw a bombshell like that into an already declining European economy and you get quite a blip. We wait to see how much of a blip but you’ll see that in our European context, if Putin’s worried about European NATO he doesn’t have to do very much if anything to wreck the European economy. He just has to wait quietly for us to finish wrecking it ourselves.
Wiz,
So your theory is that the Russians are making an example of Ukraine as a threat to any other country that wants to join NATO. How many wars in how many countries are they going to fight?
EO and Wiz,
Why didn’t Russia just build an impenetrable defense in depth all along their borders, develop massive and supremely effective air defense systems, if they fear NATO on their borders? Why not do whatever it takes to seduce countries like Armenia to stay in their realm of influence? All of that had to be cheaper and easier than Fighting a war in Ukraine for years and perhaps a hostile occupation into perpetuity. Oh yeah, maybe Putin miscalculated NATO’s will and ability to fight; thought Zelensky and the Ukrainians would throw up their hands and give Russia what it wanted on day two or three of the invasion. Bad 4D chess move right there.
It seems to me that invading Ukraine was the worst option unless it was accomplished with shock and awe and a blitzkrieg like rapid total victory. That would have instilled fear in Russia’s enemies and kept them off balance.
Getting bogged down into a slow grind situation along with other countries in proximity to Russia moving towards NATO seems to me to be a potential disaster for Russia in the making. Russia’s enemies now smell weakness wafting from the Kremlin.
Again, how many wars can a Russia that can’t even secure the Donbas, fight at the same time?
Russia will continue this war until ukrainian unconditionnal surrender.
And Odessa will be russian again.
With zero casualties there.
Note aside : Not taking Odessa would be a strategic mistake that russia will not do.
Aleksandar,
And how exactly does Russia get across all those rivers on the way to Odessa when they can’t even secure their new territories in the Donbas after two years?
More analysis straight from the Vodka bottle.
Maybe you should read before barking.
“Russia will continue this war until ukrainian UNCONDITIONNAL SURRENDER.”
No battle for Odessa.
Za vashé zdorovie !
Victoria Nuland is stepping down.
The Russians recently destroyed a few HIMARS, one of them 50km from the fron lines, which means the Ukrainian AA defense is in very pure shape. The Ukrainian command took the risk, the AA systems approached the front lines, downed a few Russian planes, and then the Russians started hunting them down.
Russians have the initiative and I’m not sure who would want to poke them in Transnistria or Gaugazia.
Jovan –
Good riddance to Nuland.
HIMARS? Finally, today, they are able to destroy a priority target of Shoigu! Good coordination between a drone team and an Iskander SRBM. Must have been a fast handoff of targeting data. Probably they worked in tandem as a hunter-killer team. But it was just one, not the ‘few’ that you claim. Unless you are counting the few plywood decoys that were hit?
leith
Do you think the Ukrainians can operate the HIMARS by themself or are western operators necessary?
Jovan –
HIMARS is easy to operate. No outside assistance needed. Furthermore, Ukrainians are not dunces. Although there are some questions as to why this one was parked in the open in daylight. Did the crew get overly cocky about Russkie targeting efforts? IMHO her prime mover was broken down, perhaps with engine trouble or a flat tire that could not be changed in time. Those FMTV trucks that carry the HIMARS have seen hard use in the last two years. All that shooting and scooting has undoubtedly taken its toll on the prime movers. Operator/driver first echelon maintenance on the trucks in wartime might be lax on a few of those 39 HIMARS. How often do they get attention from a real mechanic?
Who didn’t see this coming? I suggest a call to Baku for suggestions.
Dear besties… the exclave game needs to end. Armenia (Pashinian) was right.
Breaking news: No, you are not living during the Anthropocene epoch.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/climate/anthropocene-epoch-vote-rejected.html
by fully isolating Transnistria you can put pressure on russia, but I dont think russia can do any moves there, maybe in 6-12 months, of course some bombing is possible.
next escalation is to move in to Transnistria from ua and moldova…maybe this is a new strategy from europe – macrons idea recycling the plan to overstretch russian armies.
So, having been defeated by Ukraine, just like we’ve been told for months, Russia seems another front to fight on.
To understand Eastern Europe is to understand that ethnicity trumps national boundaries. If you dont get this you will never understand that region or the multiple wars that have raged there for hundreds of years. National boundaries there mean little when the interests of ethnic kindred are threated in another country.
Stefan,
You mean Eastern Europe doesn’t have magic dirt and wouldn’t assimilate illegal immigrants the way all those EU based politicians and NGOs keep telling us we can?
I dont know how you went from what I said to a diatribe about immigration. FYI, there are millions of immigrants in Eastern Europe.
Stefan,
So are they Eastern European, or still the nationality of the place they came from? i.e. assimilated into the local society and no longer loyal to wherever they came from.
Camp Omar needs to be ready.Boy scouts especially.you know the motto.
I don’t know what Moldova hopes to achieve with the economic blockade of Transnistria. Moldova should let good enough be and not let itself be drawn in a NATO-Russia conflict.
There are plenty of unresolved issues in the world like Transnistria or Cyprus.
They need to stay militarily neutral, pursue the EU accession and economic development and leave the Transnistria problem for some other times.
Of course the EU and NATO are probably blackmailing it and holding their EU integration hostage to Moldova getting involved in the conflict. It will just bring more war and misery to the region.
plenty of unresolved issues … pursue the EU accession and economic development and leave the Transnistria problem for some other times.
Actually, and please understand, I am only guessing, but matters may in fact be related. They may have to control or in fact close the border to benefit from export to Europe.
Ok, my guess may not be that bad:
https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-reaffirms-trade-support-ukraine-and-moldova-2024-01-31_en
LaeNder – the EU attempt to draw Moldova in may not be as innocent as as all that. Don’t forget that this war did not primarily result from NATO expansionism, although that’s all everyone talks about these days. The Maidan, which was when the civil war really got going, was a direct result of aggressive EU expansionism, that expansionism itself with security implications.
You’ll remember this:-
…………………….
”
Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko have now, somewhat late in the day, admitted to the Minsk 2 deception. All forget what came before. Richard North, the leading UK authority on the EU – he knows more about it than the Commission and the Council put together – was casting a sceptical eye on what was being attempted with Ukraine long before. The UK was a member of the EU at that time and HMG was also pressing hard for EU expansion. I put some references on this together a while back:- (Article titles in bold)
“EU politics: BBC misleads its audience on Ukraine – again.”
https://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.php?blogno=85045
Extract from the above:-
“There should thus be no mistake. These (EU) agreements are not about increasing trade in sunflower seeds and walnuts. They are an attempt by the EU to become a regional force that can project power, right up to the Russian border. Just don’t expect the BBC or other British media to tell you.
“The Daily Telegraph, for instance, also omits the defence pact details. It simply reports on the “landmark economic trade pact”, the signing prompting “a furious response from the Kremlin”. Even the US press doesn’t get it. It talks of an “economic pact” and then has Grigory Karasin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, warning in rather vague terms of “serious consequences”.
“The Russian news agency, ITAR-TASS, however, is more informative. It has the Russian Foreign Ministry stating that: “the EU counterparts failed to prove the association agreements’ advantage”, expressing concerns that “the rupture of trade and economic relations with our neighbours can damage the Russian economy”.”
A further article looked at EU expenditure on the project. Peanuts, OK, compared with the US five billion at that time, but expended judiciously:–
“Ukraine: they catch up – eventually”
https://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.php?blogno=84781
Extract from above:-
“The extent of funding to the Eastern Partnership is colossal. Between 2011 and 2013, just EU spending on Ukraine was €389 million with €13,524,357 given to single beneficiaries in 2012. As much again was given to multiple recipients. But even more sinister is the way money was parcelled out to NGOs in relatively small packages, making a little go a long way.””
And a further article examines the implications of the Association Agreement:-
“Ukraine: provocation disguised?”
https://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.php?blogno=84781
Extract from above:-
“Go back a little, to December 2011, and you can see the game the EU was playing with its Association Agreement. The aim was, it said, “to accelerate the deepening of political and economic relations between Ukraine and the EU, as well as Ukraine’s gradual integration in the EU Internal Market including by setting up a deep and comprehensive free trade area (DCFTA)”.
“The Agreement was a “concrete way to exploit the dynamics in EU-Ukraine relations, focusing on support to core reforms, on economic recovery and growth, governance and sector co-operation”. It was also seen as “a reform agenda for Ukraine, around which all Ukraine’s partners can align themselves and focus their assistance”.
“Thus the EU saw itself as the spearhead around which western penetration could be organised, including US aid.
“But this was always much more than a series of isolated association agreements with individual countries. It was very much part of a concerted programme to detach Russia from its allies, under a programme called the “Eastern Partnership policy”, encompassing Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.”
One cannot look at all that, in conjunction with NATO expansion in the region, and claim there was no concerted effort to bring the boundaries of the EU – and of NATO – right up to the borders of the RF. Mrs Merkel – the “bride left at the altar” as she put it when Yanukovych attempted to reject the agreement – was a key player and it was that debacle that led directly to the Maidan.
Sakwa also goes into this period of expansion in detail. He’s also critical of the way Brussels steamrollered the Association Agreement through, disregarding legitimate Russian trade and security concerns. This was no US “patsy” dutifully following the dictates of the Washington neocons. It was a predatory entity in its own right, using US power and influence to further its local objectives.
That was also the case in the run up to February 2022. More so, I believe.
”
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Aside from the security implications, this indicates what EU intentions were – “”Thus the EU saw itself as the spearhead around which western penetration could be organised, including US aid.”
We focus too much on the Americans, LeaNder. Brussels plays its own hand and is even now attempting to do so