Moldova ‘will be next’
Crazed Putin won’t stop with us – he’ll invade our neighbour, Kyiv warns
KYIV: Concerns that Russian aggression could expand beyond Ukraine into a wider war have grown after Kyiv accused Moscow of trying to create unrest in a Russian-backed separatist region of Moldova.
Both the US and the UN have warned of rising tensions in the Transnistria region of Moldova – a small country to Ukraine’s south – as UN chief Antonio Guterres met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow and pleaded for peace.
Russian forces have been in Transnistria for decades after the predominantly Russianspeaking region seceded from the former Soviet republic.
Blasts this week targeting the state security ministry, a radio tower and military unit came after a Russian commander claimed that Russian speakers in Moldova were being oppressed.
The claim triggered alarm that Moldova could be Russia’s next target, as Moscow used the same “false flag” argument for launching its bloody invasion of Ukraine in February.
“Russia wants to destabilise the Transnistrian region,” Mykhaylo Podolyak, a Ukraine presidential aide, wrote on Twitter. “If Ukraine falls, tomorrow Russian troops will be at Chisinau’s gates,” he said, referring to Moldova’s capital.
Mr Guterres “is following with concern reports of new security incidents in the Transnistrian region of Moldova,” a UN spokesman said.
The US echoed similar concerns, but stopped short of backing Kyiv’s contention that Russia was responsible.
“We fully support Moldova’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” US spokesman Ned Price said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lobbying for heavier firepower to push back the Russian advance that is now focused on the eastern region of Donbas.
Western allies are wary of being drawn into an outright war with Russia, but Washington pledged on Tuesday at a summit that it would move “heaven and earth” to enable Ukraine to emerge victorious.
With arms now flowing into Ukraine, Germany also announced that it would send anti-aircraft tanks – a sharp Uturn from its previously muchcriticised cautious stance.
“I can say one thing: the Ukrainian army will have something to fight with,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, said in a briefing on Facebook.
Ukraine officials said there was fighting all along frontlines in the Donetsk region, and that resistance in the Azovstal factory in the besieged port city of Mariupol was still holding out.