All hopes for a solution to the Transnistrian problem are for the birds now that Vladimir Putin is President of the Russian Federation for the second term, with Moscow making every effort to keep this breakaway territory of Moldova under its protectorate, with the notorious Rogozin at the helm. Following his visit to Moldova and Transnistria, everything became crystal clear, considering his harsh rhetoric addressing Chisinau.
The Transnistrian administration found itself under financial siege, with Moscow willing to lend a hand only if Tiraspol forgets all about rapprochement with the Right-Bank Dnister.
This is one of many examples of Russia’s policy in regard to breakaway regions (e.g., Georgia, Azerbaijan). In fact, the Kremlin makes it perfectly clear that the key to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is to be found in official Moscow, and that the Kremlin will keep this key, considering the situation in the Caspian region, as well as in Iran, and that they will use this key to Moscow’s best advantage – primarily as means of pressure on Baku, in terms of oil supplies and delimitation of the Caspian Sea.
Moscow is worried about Moldova’s serious steps taken in the direction of the European Union, so Transnistria’s separatist moods have to serve as a natural slowing-down factor. However, the point is not Moldova (a closer yet distant objective, all things considered) but Ukraine.
The Kremlin is getting mad about the Ukrainian administration’s unwillingness to join the Customs Union, considering that Moscow’s direct pressure – keeping the gas prices unchanged, waging trade wars, etc. – has failed to produce the desired result. Moscow has resorted to bypass maneuvers, including exotic ones that leave one wondering about the architects’ common sense. Yet all of them must be seriously considered because they have a strong potential aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian state.
Rogozin told the President of Transnistria, Yevgenii Shevchuk, that “in Chisinau we’ll once again broach the issue of founding a Russian consulate in Tiraspol. Otherwise we’ll arrange for the issuance of Russian [national] passports for the Russians who reside in the Transnistrian region… Nationals of the former Soviet republics are entitled to choose their [current] nationality. Most of them choose to become citizens of the Russian Federation, which is a successor to the USSR and where these people will live well and safe.”
This Kremlin hawk means not only Transnistria and Moldova. He means all former Soviet republics, including Ukraine. In other words, the mechanism launched and tested in South Ossetia and Abkhazia can be used anywhere, under the preposterous pretext that this territory was once part of another country (that no longer exists). If one follows Rogozin’s logic, people who reside in Poland should also be provided with RF passports, considering that, many decades back, a large part of Poland belonged to the Russian empire, and that today’s Russia is a successor to that empire by definition. Rogozin and his team have no such far-reaching plans, of course. It is safe to assume that the Baltic states will not be part of his plans, even though these countries were once part of the Soviet Union. The same applies to Poland. The reason is their NATO membership. Moscow’s big greedy hands would be hurt and the Kremlin knows this, but its gluttonous ambitions are still there.
