On Monday, the regional state security building in the capital Tiraspol was bombed, and there were also alleged explosions at a barracks near the Tiraspol military airfield. Two radio transmission towers that previously broadcast Russian propaganda to Ukraine were blown up. The “president” of Transnistria, Vadim Krasnoselski, spoke of terrorist attacks on Tuesday. According to the information, no one was injured.
Then, on Wednesday, a village near the Ukrainian border was bombed. There is a large Russian ammunition depot there. During the night, several drones flew over Ukraine’s Kolbasna village, Transnistria’s “Interior Ministry” said. In the morning Kolbasna was shot from Ukraine. According to the information, there were no deaths or injuries. About 20,000 tons of Soviet-era ammunition are stored in the village. The camp is guarded by Russian troops. According to the “Ministry of the Interior”, it is considered the largest ammunition depot in Europe.
AP/Transnistrian Interior Ministry blew up radio antennas in Transnistria
Divided since 1990
The region in eastern Moldova broke away from the central government after Moldova’s independence in 1990 and proclaimed its own state – with a hammer and sickle in the state emblem and a statue of Lenin in front of the “parliament” in Tiraspol. The secession took place with the help of Russian soldiers who have been stationed there since Soviet times. Russian army units are still in Transnistria: there has always been talk of 1,500 men, recently it was said that the strength of the troops could have doubled.
Various theories are circulating about who is behind the attacks, and they don’t even need to have all the same mentors. First, there is the assumption that there could be a conflict in Transnistria and Moldova, which is also linked to the Ukraine war. This assumption was first expressed by pro-Western Moldovan President Maia Sandu. However, she fears that her country, which has welcomed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians despite extreme poverty, could be drawn further into conflict.
“Help” for “discriminate” Russians?
The Ukrainian military intelligence service in Kiev has accused Russia of having staged the attacks and of wanting to provoke panic with this provocation. Troops stationed in Transnistria could attempt to attack Ukraine from there towards the Black Sea city of Odessa. In a statement published in Kiev, the secret service recalled a statement made by a Russian commander who openly said on Friday that Moscow wanted to bring all of southern Ukraine into Transnistria under its control.
The deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, Rustam Minnekayev, spoke of “discrimination against Russian-speaking residents” and indicated that their interests must be defended. This is similar to the pattern by which the invasion of Ukraine was initially justified. Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the war on the baseless claim that genocide must be avoided in both regions.
APA/AFP/Sergei Gapon In Transnistria, Soviet iconography is still flourishing
The authorities in the Moldovan capital Chisinau also made it clear that the three explosions that have taken place in Transnistria since Monday night, which resulted only in material damage, are an obvious “provocation” and a “false flag attack” – Russia wanted thus fomenting panic and creating pretexts to draw the separatist area into the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Ukraine could control Transnistria if Moldova wanted to. This statement was criticized by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in Moscow as “quite provocative”.
charges against Romania
An aggression allegedly planned by Romania could provide the pretext for Russian intervention. Sergey Markov, a Russian political scientist and former Putin adviser, claimed in Monday’s edition of the Russian daily Pravda that Romania wanted to annex neighboring Moldova “with the help of NATO and with the cooperation of the Ukrainian army” and therefore also “attack Transnistria”. , only to crack down on “Russian-speaking residents” afterwards. There is no evidence of such plans.
Prior to that, two Donbas separatist leaders, Igor Strelkov and Denis Pushilin, claimed to be aware of NATO member Romania’s plans to annex Moldova. After the recent explosions in Transnistria, Pushilin, the “head” of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”, has now asked the Russian authorities not to limit their military “special operation” to Ukraine, but to immediately expand it to Transnistria. Such and similar fantasies of great power were often heard from Russia. There was speculation that Moldova and perhaps Georgia could also be attacked – but probably only after a victory in Ukraine, from which Russia is still a long way off.
Transnistria attack currently almost impossible
Marcus Keupp of the Military Academy at ETH Zurich points out to the dpa that tanks and wheeled vehicles have not been moved in Transnistria for 30 years. The armed forces of the breakaway province would be only 5,000 men and therefore are clearly inferior to the Moldovan forces. The currently opaque development could be a diversionary attempt, Keupp said. The Russians would try to arrest Ukrainian troops in the Odessa area and thus weaken the defense of the important port city.
However, this option makes little sense for Russia at the moment. The fight is focused on Donbass after Russia realized in the first phase of the war that it shouldn’t open too many fronts at once. There are no signs of a sudden eastward push towards Odessa, and the trench warfare around Mykolaiv and Cherson has barely changed in weeks. And an attack by the Navy has been very unlikely since the sinking of the flagship “Moskva”.
Marcel Röthig, head of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation in Kiev, also considers Russian intervention in Ukraine from Transnistria unlikely. He spoke to the APA of a “flash in the pan”. “It’s about uniting Ukrainian forces in the south,” Röthig said. He doesn’t see a threat to the strategically important port city of Odessa.
Russia sees Ukrainian provocation
Russia, for its part, suspects that Ukraine is behind the attacks: Moscow is worried about the news from Transnistria, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Russian parliamentarian Leonid Kalashnikov said: “The events in Transnistria are a provocation aimed at drawing Russia further into military operations in the region.” Traces of the attacks led to Ukraine, separatist leader Krasnoselski said.
But the same applies to Ukraine and Russia. At first glance, creating a new source of conflict in the relatively war-free west of the country seems absurd.
Railway bridge destroyed as a problem
However: Russian forces bombed and severely damaged a strategically important railway and road bridge west of Odessa on Tuesday and Wednesday. In view of the damage, the western part of the Odessa region can currently only be reached by land via the roads from Moldova. The now broken rail connection between Odessa and the Ukrainian Danube ports of Izmail, Reni and Kiliya is a major economic loss. Whether the events are related, however, can only be speculated.
Ukraine-targeted attacks?
There’s also a lot of speculation about mysterious explosions in Russia, and a pattern appears to be emerging that could also apply to Transnistria. In the Belgorod region, on the border with Ukraine, an ammunition depot caught fire on Wednesday night. In early April, first an ammunition depot and then an oil depot caught fire in Belgorod, and two helicopters were observed near the oil depot. Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied an operation. Two Russian oil depots caught fire near the border in the city of Bryansk on Monday night.
It was also reported on Tuesday that an ammunition dump also exploded in the Russian-controlled town of Irmino in Luhansk Oblast. Experts surmise that the Ukrainian army is apparently taking very targeted measures against enemy supplies and logistics.