Russia-Moldova Relations at a Crossroads

Anton ŠVEC

Relations between Chisinau and Moscow have been in a protracted crisis due to the ideological attitudes of the ruling PAS and the pro-Western anti-Russian mainstream. Will a possible warming between the US and Russia change the situation?

The arrival of the new Russian ambassador, who has so far been noticeably more active than his predecessor, reflects the Kremlin’s request for involvement in Moldovan affairs, maintaining influence and re-establishing contacts where possible. Maia Sandu has yet to receive Oleg Ozerov, who was long overdue to present his credentials, but has hinted that the issue may soon be resolved. At the same time, the Russian diplomat has already been summoned to our Foreign Ministry - for example, last week the occasion was the discovery of another fallen drones in the south of the country. Moldova, under pressure from the European Union, joined most of the sanctions’ regimes against Russia. In view of the EU membership negotiations, we should theoretically adapt the rest of the anti-Russian sanctions as well, as well as refuse to participate in the CIS free trade zone. The Foreign Ministry has already announced that Chisinau will not pay membership fees to the organization in 2025 and will not take part in Commonwealth events. It should be understood that our country will continue to withdraw from CIS agreements, several dozens of which have already been cancelled in recent years. At the end of last week, Prime Minister Dorin Recean announced the impending cancellation of the Agreement on Friendship and Cooperation with the Russian Federation, as its provisions allegedly contradict the national security strategy. Moreover, this intention of the government is not new: the speaker of the parliament Igor Grosu made a similar proposal in spring last year, calling the agreement “dead” and assuring that “Russia cannot be considered a strategic partner”. It should be said that the national defense strategy for 2024-2034 names Russia as the main threat to Moldova’s security. In general, the new Russian ambassador has come to a “scorched field” and has to act according to the circumstances. According to him, Russia will use the tactics of selective cooperation in Moldova - it will work with those political forces and regions that are ready for it. In fact, this means that the intransigence of the ruling regime forces Moscow to support the opposition and provoke centrifugal tendencies in Moldova by strengthening its positions in Transnistria and Gagauzia. At the same time, it was warned that Moldovan goods, due to the country’s refusal to participate in the CIS and EAEU, risk losing the Russian market in 2-3 years. This will be a blow to exports of wine and fruit and vegetable products, which cannot be sold in the European Union. In 2023, after a series of deliberately inflated spy scandals, Chisinau significantly reduced the number of staff at the Russian embassy and trade mission. Ozerov often speaks in interviews about the need to restore diplomatic staff, but serious discussion of this topic seems unlikely today. On the contrary, as we can see, a political decision has been made to close the Russian Centre of Science and Culture. It was presented as a reaction to the downing of UAVs on Moldovan territory. The news of the closure of the Rossotrudnichestvo office met with some resistance from the opposition. The PSRM organized a small rally in front of the RCSC, where slogans were heard about the need for friendship with Russia. Former Prime Minister Ion Chicu spoke out on behalf of the Alternative bloc, declaring the total degradation of the political class: “This artificial attempt to fight against history, culture, monuments cannot be accepted by a sane person”. In general, the issue of relations with Russia remains a significant factor in domestic politics, and is also part of the ruling regime’s strategy of dividing society and a way of self-identification in the categories of “friend or foe”. Proven links with Russia instantly become a pretext for disqualification of certain parties, closure of TV channels and other media. Imaginary and alleged links become a pretext for accusatory rhetoric and the content of election campaigns. The presidential election and referendum had a distinct geopolitical connotation, and the artificial fueling of the topic of Russian interference allowed the authorities to mask their own numerous violations, falsifications and use of administrative resources. The regime is simply non-functional without the “Russian threat”, and if this factor did not exist, it should have been invented. In this sense, the Alternative bloc is interested in minimizing the Russian topic in the public sphere, so that voters finally cast their vote based on the criteria of professionalism and programme goals of the competing political forces. At the same time, PAS will inevitably continue to provoke geopolitical disputes and conflicts with Russia, including in order to confirm its loyalty to the West by seeking additional funding and a “blind eye” to all violations and excesses. Meanwhile, the situation in the world is clearly in a phase of transformation, which, under certain conditions, can take shape contrary to the wishes of Moldova’s patrons in Brussels. Yesterday, the Russian-American negotiations officially started in Riyadh. Their success can be judged by the way Donald Trump and his entourage are already talking about the inevitability of lifting sanctions after the settlement in Ukraine, reflecting on Russia’s return to the G8 and joint celebration of Victory Day. During just the first meetings the delegations agreed on concrete steps, including restoring the number of staff at the embassies in Washington and Moscow. And a meeting between Trump and Putin is due to take place soon, promising even bigger breakthroughs. In addition to mutual warming, the White House and the Kremlin are openly betting on the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party in the upcoming Bundestag elections. At the same time, at the Munich Security Conference, the U.S. Vice President, in a virtually directive mode, demanded that the pragmatic candidate Calin Georgescu be allowed to participate in the new elections in Romania. Together with the closure of USAID, possible changes in Berlin and Bucharest promise quite significant financial difficulties for Chisinau. At the same time, PAS failed to completely oust Russia from Moldova during these years (probably, such a task was not set in order not to exclude so electorally convenient “Russian threat” factor). The public, despite the rewriting of history textbooks and propaganda in the media, still predominantly supports the preservation of ties with the Russian Federation, is not against the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Moscow itself still has elements of influence: it supervises the peacekeeping mission on the Dniester, mediates the Transnistrian settlement, maintains a military contingent in Transnistria and pays for gas supplies there, helps Ilan Sor to sponsor Gagauzia. This means that there is a potential for further changes in Russian-Moldovan relations, both improvement and deterioration. In this sense, Moldova is at a crossroads, and where the situation will go next depends on the outcome of the parliamentary elections and, of course, on global processes. We cannot rule out that in the near future the authorities will be forced to use what little is left as points of contact for normalizing relations. And to begin with, the issue of the accreditation of the Russian ambassador will have to be resolved, which may become both a small positive episode that does not affect anything in particular, and the first step towards a new “bridge-building”.