Could Moldova be next on Putin’s list?

During Putin’s rally in the Russian capital (think Nuremberg on the Moskva) the patriotic song “Made in the USSR” was bellowed out by the faithful, and possibly a few of the unwillingly bussed in. The opening line is “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country”.

Parts of Ukraine are indeed now back under Russian occupation and most of Belarus is under its control. That leaves Moldova where the worry is that they might take the Soviet era song equally literally. If you have a penchant for patriotic anthems, you can suffer a modern take on the dirge here.

Russia’s miserably performed, but murderously executed military campaign over the past month means potential plans to invade Moldova might appear a little ambitious, but Western intelligence sources suggest it was, and may be in the future, in Moscow’s sights. Six days into the war, Putin’s ally, President Lukashenko of Belarus, gave a televised address to his security council involving a large map which included Moldova as part of the regions to be occupied. It was, Minsk later clarified, a mistake. Indeed.

Moldova is at risk for several reasons. It borders Ukraine, it’s a former Soviet republic, 15% of the population speak Russian as their first language, and there are up to 2,000 Russian soldiers in its breakaway Transnistrian region. As the Soviet Union broke up, the predominantly Russian speaking Transnistria declared itself separate from Moldova sparking a civil war which ended in 1992. The Kremlin ensured Russian troops stayed on as “peacekeepers” despite repeatedly being asked to leave by the Moldovan government. The presence of many Russian speakers in Transnistria was due to Stalin redrawing Ukraine’s borders precisely to ensure Moldova would not wish to leave Moscow’s sphere of influence.

The country has always been of interest to the Kremlin. It is at the southern end of the Carpathian Mountains as the land flattens out towards the Black Sea. Just as Moscow wishes to control the northern end – Poland – so it also wants control over the other “gateway” to and from the Motherland.   

In the capital, Chisinau, the commanders of its army of 8,000 soldiers are watching closely for any sign of an attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa. It lies just 60 kilometres from the Palanca – the nearest Moldovan border town. The fear is that if Odesa falls the way is open to create a land corridor to Transnistria and link up with the Russian forces there. Even if Putin’s ambitions do not lie so far west, fighting in Odesa will inevitably increase the number of refugees Moldova has received. To date over 350,000 people have crossed the border, the largest number of Ukrainian refugees per capita. More than 150,000 have remained in the country which by many estimates is the poorest in Europe.

Moldova needs help. It cannot afford to take care of such a large refugee community which is putting an immense burden on the population of just 2.6 million. Almost a quarter of the labour force works abroad. This is partially due to limited opportunities at home, and partially because Moldovans who can prove their ancestry is Romanian can apply for dual nationality, get Romanian passports, and thus work in the EU.

There are often tensions between pro-Western and pro-Russian factions in the country, and naturally these are particularly apparent now. A Russian invasion could easily ignite these tensions into violence. Moldova’s current government looks mostly westward, while simultaneously treading a cautious line with Moscow due to the economic (and energy) ties it still has with Russia. A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine the Moldovan government applied to join the EU. However, it remains wary of inviting Russia’s anger with a bid to join NATO and instead reminds all sides that neutrality is enshrined in Moldova’s constitution.  

That leaves Moldova behind the security line drawn by NATO, and in a precarious position. The Ukrainians have surprised most people with the success of their resistance, but Moldova has neither the personnel nor the equipment to do anything remotely similar. The best it can hope for is that Odesa is not taken, and that Chisinau will receive the aid required to take care of the refugees it has taken in. If that help is not enough the cracks in Moldova’s fragile society could widen, and Moscow could slip through them.