- A senior adviser to Navalny said a Russian attack on Moldova and Georgia was “not off the table”.
- “If he can, he probably will,” Vladimir Ashurkov said of Putin and his potential to escalate the Ukraine war.
- Mysterious explosions in a breakaway region of Moldova have raised concerns that Russia may be next to attack there.
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There is growing concern in the West that Russian President Vladimir Putin could extend his unprovoked war in Ukraine to other countries such as Moldova and Georgia.
Vladimir Ashurkov, a senior adviser to jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, told Insider that such scenarios are “not off the table.”
“This large-scale invasion of Ukraine came as a shock to me. I didn’t think it was possible, but it happened two months ago. To consider whether Putin is able to expand attacks on Transnistria and Moldova, etc. – if he can, he probably will,” warned Ashurkov, the executive director of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation. “It’s not off the table that things like this can happen.”
That warning came after mysterious, unexplained explosions this week in Transnistria, a Moscow-backed separatist area where about 1,500 Russian troops are stationed. Transnistria, considered part of Moldova by the international community, shares a 250-mile border with Ukraine.
Major General Rustam Minnekayev, a senior Russian commander, said last Friday that taking over southern Ukraine would link Russia to Transnistria. This suggests that Putin may include the breakaway territory in his war plans and has raised alarms across the region. Ukraine said Thursday it would move more troops to the border with Moldova. Meanwhile, Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu told reporters on Thursday that his country was facing “a very dangerous new moment”.
Like Ukraine, Moldova is a former Soviet republic that is not part of the NATO alliance.
“I think it was always Mr Putin’s intention to take over Moldova and Georgia and the Baltic states. He’s certainly capable of horizontal escalation…if he thinks he can deter the West,” Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander for NATO, said CNN earlier this week.
So did Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland in a tweet said on Monday that while Ukraine is Russia’s current target, its defeat at the hands of Russian forces would mean that “Moldova, Georgia and other countries, including NATO allies, are threatened by a Russian invasion.”
Neither Moldova nor Georgia are alien to Russian aggression. Russian forces intervened in a war in Moldova on behalf of pro-Russian rebels in 1992 and have occupied Transnistria ever since. Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008 during a short but formative war. Russian troops continue to occupy about 20% of Georgia’s territory – the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The governments of Georgia and Moldova have been pushing for more Western support since Russia invaded Ukraine, and both formally applied for EU membership last month. To this end, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili visited Washington on Thursday. tweet that she spoke to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “about Ukraine and unjustified Russian aggression and the importance of continued US support for Georgia at these crucial times.”
Surabichvili also spoke on the phone with Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Thursday. After their conversation, Sandu tweeted that she thanked the President of Georgia for “her country’s solidarity with Moldova in these difficult times for the entire region.”
The Moldovan leader said earlier in the week the blasts in Transnistria were perpetrated by “pro-war”.
“We condemn all challenges and attempts to induce Moldova into actions that could endanger the peace in the country,” Sandu said.
“We are dealing with a desperate rogue operator”
Russian President Vladimir Putin stands in a hall before a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart at the Kremlin in Moscow March 11, 2022. Mikhail Klimentyev/Getty Images
Despite growing concerns in Moldova and Georgia, it is also questionable whether Russia will be able to expand the conflict beyond Ukraine. The war has so far been disastrous for the Russian military while economically and politically isolating Moscow. Russian troops are also currently focusing their efforts in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region.
“It is a question of the battlefield situation. It’s a question of the economic damage the sanctions are doing to Russia. It is a question of the flow of arms that Western countries are supplying to Ukraine,” Ashurkov said.
Ashurkov lives in exile in London but remains focused on exposing corruption in Russia – particularly when it comes to the activities of Putin’s inner circle. As someone who works closely with the Russian leader’s most prominent critic, he is well aware of how ruthless Putin can be.
Before being thrown behind bars last year on politically motivated charges, Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in August 2020 and nearly died. Leaders around the world have condemned Putin for the poisoning. The Russian leader denied any involvement, despite the strong similarities to previous Moscow-related operations that targeted Putin’s critics.
In the time since his poisoning and imprisonment, Navalny’s political network has been labeled “extremist” and banned in Russia, forcing his foundation to relocate staff and set up a new office in Lithuania. And last month, Navalny’s sentence was extended by nine years by a judge Putin had promoted to a higher court just days earlier.
As the brutal war in Ukraine shows, Putin’s aggression and cold-blooded leadership extends far beyond Russia’s borders.
“I don’t think anyone on planet Earth has a safe future with a lunatic banging around with a nuclear bomb,” Ashurkov said of Putin. “The situation is pretty dire for everyone.”
“Russia has shown increasing assertiveness in foreign policy over the years. The war in Georgia was the first example, so to speak, but then we saw the annexation of Crimea, the meddling in eastern Ukraine. We’ve seen a number of cyberattacks, including US election meddling. We have seen a number of attacks in different countries. We have seen Russia take the place of a brutal dictatorship in Syria,” Ashurkov said, adding, “This was met with a fairly indecisive response from Western countries. More could have been done.”
Perhaps to avoid the mistakes of the past, Western governments in recent days have begun to stress the need to prepare Moldova and Georgia, among other countries, for possible Russian attacks.
“This is a time for courage, not caution,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a speech on Wednesday. “And we need to make sure that alongside Ukraine, the Western Balkans and countries like Moldova and Georgia have the resilience and capabilities to uphold their sovereignty and freedom.”
“We are dealing with a desperate rogue operator who has no interest in international norms,” Truss said of Putin.