On Friday, April 23, comments by Russian General Rustam Minnekayev caused alarm in Moldova.
The acting commander of Russia’s Central Military District suggested that taking control of southern Ukraine would serve as a corridor for Moscow to gain access to Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova.
“Control over southern Ukraine is another way to reach Transnistria, where there are also acts of oppression against the Russian-speaking population,” Minnekaev said, according to the Russian Interfax news agency.
His speech prompted Moldova to express “deep concern” by summoning the Russian ambassador to the country and since then the breakaway region has suffered several incidents.
What’s going on
On Monday, a building in the center of Tiraspol, the regional capital, was hit after a grenade launcher attack, and on Tuesday explosions were reported at the radio-television center in the town of Maiak, near the border with Ukraine.
Following the latest events, the President of Moldova, Maia Sandu, called a meeting of the country’s Supreme Security Council (SSC).
The Office for the Reintegration of Moldova assures that the explosions sought to “create pretexts to test the security situation in the Transnistria region, which is not controlled by the constitutional authorities.”
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Tuesday night that “Russia’s war against Ukraine is only the beginning.”
“Russia’s ultimate goal is not just to seize the territory of Ukraine, but to dismember all of Central and Eastern Europe and deal a blow to global democracy,” he added.
Local authorities assured this Wednesday that during the night of Tuesday there were shots in a town that houses a large ammunition depot.
They specified that the drone strikes had been launched from Ukraine.
But kyiv claims it is a “false flag” operation aimed at destabilizing the region and dragging it into war.
Zelensky has previously accused Russian special services of being behind the attacks rocking Transnistria.
But what is this region like and why is it of interest to the Kremlin?
Soviet past
Transnistria is a small region bordering Ukraine that lies to the west of Moldova, a country that was part of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1940 until its dissolution in the early 1990s.
Shortly before the total collapse of the former communist power, a conflict broke out there between the newly independent Republic of Moldova and separatist groups in Transnistria, who wanted to maintain ties with Moscow.
The civil war did not last long, but since the ceasefire in July 1992, about 1,500 Russian troops have been stationed to “keep the peace” in the territory.
With the end of the conflict, Transnistria declared its independence.
But apart from other disputed regions such as Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, no member state of the United Nations recognizes it.
Great autonomy
It has its own Constitution, government, army, currency and even passports, which are practically useless.
It is so autonomous that even the Moldovan authorities admit they have no control over the territory.
The majority of its population of around 500,000 inhabitants has dual or triple nationality, be it Russian, Moldovan or Ukrainian.
Less than 70 km southeast of Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, lies Tiraspol with its 130,000 inhabitants, a small city often described as “stuck in the USSR”.
In this regional capital, there is no shortage of streets named after communist idols or important dates from the Soviet era, nor is there a large statue of Lenin towering over the brutalist-style local Parliament building.
Links with Russia
Since Transnistria declared its independence 30 years ago, Tiraspol’s population has shrunk by at least a third.
Most of its inhabitants have left to find work abroad, many in Russia, as economic prospects plummeted after the fall of the USSR.
Salaries here are even lower than in the rest of Moldova, which is one of the poorest countries in Europe.
Although the three predominant ethnic groups in Transnistria (Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovans) are similar in size, Russian is the dominant language.
Also, Russian flags fly alongside those of Transnistria – the only one in the world that still includes a hammer and sickle – on many buildings in the city.
A large weapons depot
Transnistria is also known for hosting the largest Cold War arsenal: a depot with some 20,000 tons of weapons and ammunition.
Although according to its critics, an explosion in this place could generate a detonation equivalent to that of the Hiroshima bomb, other experts point out that this is unlikely, and that they are old and disused weapons.
The Kolbasna arms depot, near the Ukrainian border, was built in the 1940s, when Moldova was still part of the Soviet Union.
With the end of the Cold War it became the place where the weapons that the Soviet forces brought with them when they withdrew from East Germany, Czechoslovakia and other countries of the former communist bloc were stored.
At a summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), held in 1999 in Istanbul, Moscow agreed to remove some of the ammunition and weapons it kept in Transnistria.
Between 2000 and 2004, it took entire trainloads of weapons and ammunition from the Kolbasna depot, where by then it was estimated that there were some 40,000 tons of this material.
That process, however, was paralyzed by decision of the Transnistrian authorities and has not been able to be reactivated.
In September 2021, in her annual address to the UN General Assembly, Moldovan President Maia Sandu reiterated her call for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria and the removal of stored weapons and ammunition. in Kolbasna.
But Moscow has refused to allow other forces to take over the security of material or peacekeeping tasks in the area.
