RUSSIA’S POLICY ON THE TRANSNISTRIO CONFLICT IN MOLDOVA: CONCLUSIONS FOR POST-SOVIET COUNTRIES

Abstract

The article examines the policy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Moldova, especially its role in provoking and inciting the conflict between the authorities of the self-proclaimed “Transnistrian Moldavian Republic” and the official Chisinau. The article emphasizes the use by Moscow and its Transnistrian puppets of the functioning of an autonomous entity in eastern Moldova within Soviet Ukraine with its center in Tiraspol in 1924–1940 as a historical precedent. It is proven that the conflict in Transnistria has an ethnopolitical, economic and geopolitical basis artificially formed by Russian imperial entities. To destabilize the situation in Moldova and subsequently keep it under control, Moscow uses the ethnic factor and the Russian military presence in the region, as well as all the tools of hybrid influence at its disposal. The use of the strategy of “freezing” the conflict on the Left Bank of the Dniester allowed Russia to achieve recognition of its status as a peacekeeping country, as well as the exclusion of Romania from the number of international participants in the settlement of the confrontation between Chisinau and Tiraspol. By participating in the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict, Russia seeks to achieve recognition of the post-Soviet space as a “sphere of special responsibility” of Moscow from leading international actors, primarily the United States. Having failed to achieve support for any of its plans for the “settlement” of the Transnistrian conflict, Russia has turned the negotiation process in the “5+2” format into a fiction. The author is convinced that the settlement of the Transnistrian problem is currently directly dependent on the results of the Russian-Ukrainian war