Fertile ground for conflict
Explosions in Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova aligned with Russia, raise fears among its neighbours
The Russian-uniformed border guard holds out his hand and the truck driver hands over his other documents – a routine and otherwise unremarkable transaction. Except it is happening hundreds of kilometres from Russia.
It is taking place within the tiny European country of Moldova, at the border of the Russia-aligned territory known as Transnistria, home to an estimated 18,000 tonnes of Soviet-era weapons, ammunition and explosives, and more than 1,000 Russian troops.
Transnistria sits on the Ukraine border and its neighbours have long worried that Russia will use it as a staging area for an invasion either east into Ukraine or west into Moldova. A series of explosions within Transnistria this week have further heightened concerns.
“It’s the reality we’re seeing, the surreal reality. That’s what really worries a lot of people,” said Olena
Khorenjenko, 33, a Ukrainian refugee who fled to Moldova.
“These are our neighbours – not some faraway people.”
Transnistria is awash with Soviet symbols. Its flag is emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, a huge statue of Lenin looms over the centre of its main city Tiraspol and a bust of the Bolshevik leader sits outside the town hall, or House of Soviets.
Transnistria gets its name from being on the east side of the Dniester River, and it occupies a long, narrow slice of land alongside Ukraine.
On Monday night, explosions struck the headquarters of Transnistria security forces, who are paid by Russia. More explosions on Tuesday destroyed transmission towers used for Russian broadcasts. Moldovan officials said the Monday explosions were caused by grenade launchers.
The explosions came days after a Russian commander claimed Russian speakers in Moldova were being oppressed – the same argument used to justify the invasion of Ukraine. The building hit by explosions was empty because it was a public holiday.
Moldovan officials said the attacks were designed “to create pretexts for tensioning the security situation”.
Ukraine’s military warned that Russian troops in Transnistria “have been put on full combat readiness”. In addition, the security forces of the Moldovan separatists had also been put on heightened readiness, it said.
Like many Ukrainians, Khorenjenko worries Russia will annex Transnistria the way it did the Crimea or Donbas regions. Few Moldovans visit the area, and many treat it with suspicion due to its Russian ties. The Russian soldiers remain there primarily to guard the ammunition depot, left behind as the Soviet army withdrew from Europe at the end of World War II, and to protect a polluting steel foundry.
Transnistria broke away from Moldova during the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and the region is home to people who are linked almost equally to Russia, Romania and Moldova.
Although the United Nations does not recognise Transnistria as its own country, about 500,000 people live there, and the territory has its own money and an official name: the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic.
Transnistrians were in some ways a throwback to the idea of the Soviet Union, said Keith Harrington, an Irish scholar who studies the area: “They try to hold onto the Soviet idea that you have an ethnic identity but that you identify with the region as well.”
Harrington said most visitors would not notice a significant difference from being in Moldova, as many of the “Russian” border guards and soldiers were born locally, rather than transferred in from Russia, the way the Soviet Union handled things.
“Most of those troops are people who are born in Transnistria and have Russian citizenship. They’re not really Russian troops,” Harrington said. “And from what I’ve heard, there’s no appetite for those armed forces to get involved in the Ukraine conflict.”
Many Moldovans view Transnistria with a concern that borders on outright fear, although they are reluctant to discuss those views publicly, in part because they worry Russian intelligence agents might target them, especially if President Vladimir Putin decided to attack Moldova.
Last week, a Russian general suggested that Moscow might continue its military advance across southern Ukraine to reach Transnistria, though no other officials have publicly endorsed that goal.
On Tuesday, Moldovan President Maia Sandu reiterated her longstanding commitment to a peaceful relationship with Transnistria. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Sandu formally requested membership in the European Union, which could eventually bring the small country military protection from other EU members if requested.
Philip Remler, a former US State Department official, said: “There’s a Russian playbook in these cases – Moscow encouraged separatism as a weapon, and protected the separatists, and while refusing to recognise them as states, gave them some legitimacy as political entities in their own right.”
He said Russia had never seemed particularly serious in its interest in Transnistria, “and it’s an interest that, I believe, the Transnistrians would rather do without”.