CNN –
Pro-Russian rebels in a separatist part of Moldova have asked President Vladimir Putin to protect their region from alleged threats from Moldova's government.
Transnistria, which illegally seceded from Moldova after the collapse of the Soviet Union, remained firmly in the Kremlin's sphere of influence, while Moldova, which borders Ukraine, is applying to join the European Union.
At a special congress on Wednesday, politicians in Transnistria called on Moscow to protect it from “increasing pressure from Moldova,” and the Kremlin later said protecting its “compatriots” was a priority, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported.
While the congress initially sparked fears that Moscow might continue its long-standing plan to destabilize Moldova's increasingly pro-Western government, Moldova dismissed it as “propaganda.”
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Sessions of the Transnistrian Congress of Deputies, a Soviet-era decision-making model, are rare but often significant. A congress of representatives created Transnistria in 1990 and sparked a war two years later between Moscow-backed separatists and the fledgling Republic of Moldova.
No country officially recognizes Transnistria, where Russia has maintained a dwindling military presence for decades, now standing at around 1,500 soldiers.
The last session of Congress before Wednesday was in 2006, when it passed a referendum calling for joining Russia. When Transnistrian politicians unexpectedly announced a new meeting, analysts suspected it could lead to new calls for unification with Russia. Moldovan and Ukrainian officials downplayed the speculation.
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Congress stopped short of this extreme outcome and instead passed a resolution calling on Russia to provide greater “protection” from Moldovan authorities to more than 220,000 Russian nationals in Transnistria.
“Transnistria will persistently fight for its identity, the rights and interests of the Transnistrian people and will not give up its protection, despite blackmail or pressure from outside,” the resolution said, according to Russian state media TASS.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said: “Protecting the interests of Transnistrian residents, our compatriots, is one of the priorities.”
Moldovan authorities dismissed the congress as an attempt to stir up “hysteria.”
“There is no risk of escalation and destabilization of the situation in this region of our country,” wrote spokesman Daniel Voda on Telegram. “What is happening in Tiraspol? [the region’s capital] is a propaganda event.”
In a statement to CNN, Moldova's Office of Reintegration said it “rejects the propagandistic statements of Tiraspol and recalls that the Transnistrian region benefits from the policy of peace, security and economic integration with the EU, which is for all citizens is beneficial.”
Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Matt Miller said on Wednesday that the United States is “very closely monitoring Russia's actions in Transnistria and the general situation there.”
Russia's war in Ukraine had a profound impact on Transnistria's economy. Ukraine closed its border with Transnistria at the start of the war, cutting off about a quarter of the enclave's trade. Although the country still receives free Russian gas, the agreement allowing gas transit through Ukraine expires in December and there is no guarantee that the agreement will be extended.
The war also spurred Moldova to try to resolve its decades-long conflict with Transnistria. Partly in response to the war, the EU granted Moldova candidate status in June 2022 and gave the green light to begin accession negotiations in December 2023.
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While Moldova's President Maia Sandu has indicated she would be willing to join the EU without Transnistria, reunification could streamline the process. A recent blog from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace states: “Moldova’s strategy is to speed up the process by making life as difficult as possible for Transnistria.”
In this sense, in January, Moldova unexpectedly abolished customs relief for Transnistrian companies, forcing them to pay duties to both Transnistria and Moldova.
Dumitru Minzarari, lecturer in security studies at the Baltic Defense College, told CNN that Transnistria's decision to hold a special congress was “directly triggered by the reintroduction of tariffs in Moldova.”
“By granting tax exemptions to the separatist region, the government of Moldova effectively financed the existence of a separatist regime in Tiraspol,” Minzarari said – an arrangement the government no longer had to tolerate.
Minzarari said the dispute had opened opportunities for Russian authorities to “fish in troubled waters.”
Had the Russian invasion of Ukraine gone as planned, it would have captured the capital, Kiev, within days, the rest of the country within weeks, and spread across Ukraine's coast to the southwestern city of Odessa, near Transnistria.
The then commander of Russia's Central Military Region, Major General Rustam Minnekaev, said one goal of the so-called “special military operation” was to establish a corridor through southern Ukraine to Transnistria, as Russia sought reunification with its “compatriots abroad.”
Although Ukraine halted Moscow's advance near Kherson, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) from Transnistria, analysts stressed that Russia maintained plans for Moldova.
“The Kremlin is trying to use Transnistria as a Russian-controlled proxy to, among other things, derail Moldova’s EU accession process,” the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank, warned in a report last week.
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A bust of Lenin in front of the House of Soviets building in Tiraspol, July 2022.
Just as Russia found Ukraine's transition to the EU in 2014 unacceptable and used military force to prevent it, it is also striving to prevent it in Moldova. CNN last year saw a document from Russia's FSB intelligence service detailing a plan to destabilize Moldova and prevent it from aligning with the West.
Putin justified Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and military operations in Donetsk and Luhansk as an attempt to protect Russian-speaking citizens in eastern Ukraine who he said were threatened by Kiev.
Minzarari said there were “strong parallels” between this rhetoric and the type recently used by the Transnistrian government. In an interview with RIA Novosti, President Vadim Kranoselsky claimed that the Moldovan government was preparing terrorist attacks against Transnistria ahead of a possible invasion, without providing any evidence.
However, other analysts argue that the situation in Transnistria does not underline Russia's influence in the region, but rather serves as a reminder that Moscow has so far failed to achieve its main war goals.
“A call to annex Transnistria rejected by Russia would be a major PR coup for Ukraine and would remind Russians and Ukrainians that what commentators thought were modest war goals two years ago are now too far out of Russia's reach to achieve “Even thinking about it,” Ben Dubow, a non-resident staff member at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told CNN.