Moldovan gambit

Why was the PM eliminated from the political board?

Recently, speaking in Brussels to his European hosts and sponsors, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a loud statement that he had conveyed to his Moldovan counterpart Maia Sandu a plan to ‘destroy Moldova’. Of course, the terrible monster that suggests nothing less than ‘destroy the democracy of Moldova and establish control over Moldova’ is Russia. Where the valiant Ukrainian intelligence officers got a detailed plan for the destruction of a flourishing little republic on the Dniester remained a mystery. As well as how the Russian Federation, which does not have direct land and sea borders with Moldova, could carry out its insidious plans. Well, only if you would first completely conquer Ukraine! But the President of ‘Mother-Ukraine’ himself tries not to believe in such a development of events, and does not allow others to! And then why frighten the Moldovan society?

Fear and horror!

Although the representatives of the Moldovan authorities themselves coped well with the role of intimidator and alarmist. So, at the end of the past, in 2022, the chief intelligence officer of the country, Director of Information and Security Service (ISS) Alexandru Musteata, pretty much tickled the nerves of the Moldovans. According to him, Russia’s attack on Moldova is scheduled for January-February 2023, well, or a little later.

The voiced information frightened the political beau monde of the grape and tomato republic so much that it was their Romanian friends who had to reassure the descendants of the Bessarabian haiduks.

The official Bucharest then stated that his heirs of the Securitate, that is, representatives of the special services, do not have any data on threats to the security of Moldova.
Nevertheless, Musteata’s last year’s fabrications and Zelenskyy’s fresh stuffing (instantly confirmed by the same SIS, which, like the Ukrainian President himself, refused to disclose details) have a quite obvious task: to increase the degree of Anti-Russian sentiment fomented by the pro-Western regime of Maia Sandu, and also justify Moldova’s rapprochement with NATO and pave the way for a possible abandonment of the country’s current neutral status.

Following the path of intensifying confrontation with Russia, President Sandu (by the way, who has a second citizenship of Romania — a member of the North Atlantic Alliance) has repeatedly made harsh statements and demonstrative unfriendly gestures towards Moscow.

Impossible dreams of NATO

Chisinau recently tried to get modern air defence systems from its Western patrons. The Moldovan military regularly participates in NATO exercises, and the country has begun a large-scale modernisation of the armed forces according to NATO standards, which required a sharp increase in the military budget. Western sponsors even allocated €40 million for this. Increasingly, sharp statements about the need for a radical solution to the ‘Transnistrian problem’ are being heard from the lips of representatives of the ruling political elite. This implies the return of control over the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic by force, which will require getting rid of the Russian peacekeeping contingent, which has maintained fragile peace and security in the region since the 1990s.

At the same time, the actions of the current government of Moldova do not at all correspond to the aspirations and moods of the people.

According to a recent poll conducted by the SBS-AXA Centre for Sociological Research, 55.5 percent of respondents were against joining NATO, and half as many were in favour. Almost half of Moldovans (47.7 percent of respondents) stated that they do not consider Russia a threat, and 46 percent would refuse to fight in the event of a direct military conflict with this country.

On the edge of the economic abyss...

We can understand ordinary Moldovans. Until recently, a significant part of the country’s able-bodied population worked in Russia, sending up to $600 million annually to Moldova as assistance to their families.
In 2014, up to 586,000 migrants (with a population of 2.6 million in Moldova) were employed in the Russian economy. After the introduction of visa-free communication with the European Union, this figure has decreased, and today it is about 77,000. Nevertheless, the reorientation of Moldovan migrant workers towards the European direction did not significantly change political likes and dislikes. And this is largely due to the internal politics of the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity, he representative of which is Maia Sandu.

The activities of the party government, which until last Friday was headed by Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilitsa, brought the economic situation in Moldova to the extreme.

According to the results of the past year, inflation in the country was estimated at 30-34 percent. On average, food prices have risen by almost a quarter (and for some indicators, such as bread, milk, meat, they have doubled!), while the cost of food has become higher than in neighbouring warring Ukraine! Gasoline has risen in price by one and a half times, diesel fuel — by almost two times. Tariffs for water supply have doubled, for electricity — more than three times, gas for end users has risen in price by six to seven times!
At the same time, the Moldovan government, trying to bargain with Gazprom, itself concluded such an unfavourable pricing agreement that in January 2023 the cost of a thousand cubic metres of Russian gas for the republic amounted to more than $1,200, although blue fuel was traded no more than $700 on the EU exchanges. The real disposable income decreased by more than 12 percent in Moldova last year.

No wonder that with such ‘care’ for the people, they responded with a counter ‘love’! Throughout last autumn and the first month of winter, Moldovans periodically went to protests and demonstrations demanding the resignation of the government and President Sandu.

Farmers went on strike, deprived of fertilisers, which were previously purchased by 75 percent in Russia. The rally was held by pensioners whose pension, in violation of Moldovan laws, was indexed only by half of the required amounts. Entrepreneurs who remained in the country expressed their dissatisfaction, because last year not a single large or medium-sized enterprise was opened, and more than 2,600 companies closed.

So why do they need a new PM?

However, the resignation of Prime Minister Gavrilitsa and the government the Friday before last did not take place for this reason at all. The protests were crushed, some of the opposition were imprisoned, all Russian-language TV channels were closed in the country, in other words, they got the bit between their teeth.

It’s just that in the course of bureaucratic games a former Defence and National Security Advisor to the President – Secretary of the Supreme Security Council Dorin Recean was brought to the post of Prime Minister.

He will soon have to form a new government, which will largely consist of former ministers. So it’s not about them, the ministers. But changing the PM is another matter. The new head of government is a significant figure, saying only that Sandu and the European integrators, on whose behalf she speaks, have taken a final and irrevocable course towards a confrontation with Russia and drawing Moldova into a military whirlwind. Military provocations against Transnistria are not far off. Well, of course, all economic troubles can be attributed to the war.

By Aleksei Belyaev, a political scientist