Moscow and Tiraspol have responded harshly to the careless words of Igor Dodon about the close Transnistrian settlement, which the Moldovan President made against the background of rumors about a possible coalition of the Party of Socialists and the Democratic Party of Vlad Plahotniuc.
The representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova at a briefing publicly reigned in the politician, who more often than anyone met with Vladimir Putin in the last two years. The unrecognized Transnistria called Dodon’s plans “specific activity” of a person without powers.
Regular RTA expert comments on the situation.
Dmitry Astakhov, RTA:
After the parliamentary elections in Moldova Igor Dodon found himself in the most unenviable situation, perhaps. The result achieved by the Party of Socialists is obviously not the best, but also not critically bad. But it’s still demoralizing. The socialists didn’t get the constitutional majority, can’t or don’t want to unite with ACUM to ‘clear’ Moldova of Plahotniuc’s structures. Judging by the number of mandates in the legislative body of the country, the PSRM is still in the lead, but what to do with this victory does not know at all, because the only real option in this situation seems to be a coalition with the Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party, which is shameful, unpleasant and insulting. Just remember how often the leaders of the PDM removed the President from office, and the political future of the union with the Democratic Party seems unenviable.
Igor Dodon, however, is a skilled and experienced politician who knows how to play long and for the sake of the future of the country is ready to pass through the forced cooperation with the Democrats. So the main problem with the President now is not that he has to make a deal with the devil: in the end, ‘know your enemy’. The main source of problems for Igor Dodon is the crisis of the genre, which he experiences after an insufficiently convincing victory in the parliamentary elections.
It is no secret that since 2016, Dodon’s rhetoric and line of conduct has been based on several basic meanings. The socialist leader promised to unite both banks of the Dniester, to end the rule of the oligarchs and establish a presidential form of government, to cancel the Association Agreement with the EU, to restore the good relations with Russia, to secure the military neutrality of the RM and to revive the Moldovan patriotism on the territory of Moldova poisoned by ideas of unionism.
He generously gave assurances that the PSRM will do this all in the status of the ruling party immediately after the election. Now the strategy needs to be urgently adjusted, and the most paradoxical thing is that the vector of its change is still unclear to anyone, even the most experienced political experts of Moldova. First of all, because the future configuration of the ruling coalition is unclear.
Will it be a parity sham union, a ‘pro-Moldova’ coalition, where geopolitics will be placed in the background, or a union “for a neutral Moldova”, where the postulate will be the reset of relations with Europe and Moscow? Hardly Igor Dodon or anyone in the Moldovan politics can answer this question now. The President simply cannot declare any specific position – and this is becoming a serious problem for the political future of the PSRM.
The first unexpectedly negative circumstance for Dodon is the loss of the opportunity to speak up. Bright and active rhetoric in the media and social networks has won the President the sympathy of the Moldovan people, but now when he is expected to make principled statements, the President has to remain silent. Trust dissipates and people’s attention shifts to rivals – Plahotniuc, Sandu and Nastase.
The second problem is the lack of allies. The Party of Socialists believed so much in its resounding success that it infected its partners in Russia with this belief, who seriously invested in the victory of the PSRM in the elections. Poor performance of the socialists, apparently, much discouraged Russian counterparts of Igor Dodon – hence the hasty informal visit of the latter to the capital of Russia in late February, which many regarded as a trip for consultations in the context of the impending crisis.
Igor Dodon decided to fill the political limbo with his safe and proven postulates that two weeks after the election, however, had a different tone. How else to explain why the leader of the socialists in the midst of bargaining on the format of the future coalition remembered his model for solving the Transnistrian problem, which can almost reconcile Russia and the EU and which has not a word about “federalization”.
In 2017-2018, there was still something similar to intrigue in the presidential concept of the Transnistrian settlement. Now it looks like an absolutely inelegant attempt to justify a possible coalition with the ruling Democrats, and therefore the words about the “consensus between the President, Parliament and the government” in 2019 take a completely different shading. Partners in Moscow may have a strong impression that this “consensus” in the form of a ruling coalition with the PDM was the initial goal of the PSRM. If such a hypothesis seems plausible, Igor Dodon may lose former support in the East significantly faster.
This unexpected public reaction of RF Foreign Ministry representative Zakharova to already commonplace statements by the leader of the PSRM is a signal that the political climate for Igor Dodon in Moscow ceases to be as soft and infinitely comfortable as in the last two years. 
