Transnistria would love to join Russia, but Russia doesn’t welcome that. It wants the not-quite independent territory to stay as it is, causing trouble for Moldova and keeping it out of the EU and NATO.

Mikhail Karaman points at his grandfather’s image at the Soviet memorial for the second world war fallen at Chobruchi, Transnistria

photo : Jens Malling

“Towards the future together with Russia.” The Russian words cover the side of a trolleybus in Tiraspol, capital of Transnistria, the “Trans-Dniester Moldavian Republic”. Russian is the territory’s main official language, and the words are part of an ad sponsored by the Eurasian Economic Union, showing a local family looking towards a silhouette of the Kremlin as a protective fortress. Passengers seem to step in and out of the picture. The bus is on the main street, named 25 October after the 1917 revolution.

The annexation of Crimea in March 2014 brought Western media attention to many frozen conflicts stemming from the creation of breakaway states not recognised when the Soviet Union collapsed; there has been speculation that the Kremlin leadership might also annex Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria — all de facto independent states, but not recognised internationally — in reaction to the association agreements signed in June 2014 between the EU and Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia. But Russia has been careful not to do so. Back in 2006, a referendum showed that 98% of voters in Transnistria (population half a million) favoured “potential future integration into Russia”, though the vote was organised by the Transnistrian government on the direct instructions of (then) president Igor Smirnov.

In Transnistria, on the eastern bank of the Dniester, you pass checkpoints controlled by peacekeeping forces, some displaying the Russian tricolour on their uniforms. Transnistria and Moldova contribute manpower as well. The peacekeepers have been stationed here since the 1992 war between Moldovan government troops and Slavonic language-speaking insurgents in this narrow strip of territory between the Dniester and Ukraine, which led to Transnistria’s breakaway (1). The victorious insurgents proclaimed independence and adopted a constitution, flag, national anthem and coat of arms. The republic has its own government, parliament, military, police and postal system, but is not recognised by any UN member state.

Transnistria has been linked to Russia since the treaty of Jassy, signed in 1792 when Moldova was still part of the Ottoman empire. From 1945 to 1991, the Dneister’s east bank was part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the 15 republics of the USSR. In June 1990, as the Soviet Union was breaking up, the Slavonic language-speaking population revolted against the Moldovan parliament’s adoption of a law making Romanian the sole official language. In February 2014 the new government of Ukraine, formed after the Maidan protests in Kiev, made the same mistake by proposing to abolish Russian as a regional official language, a move seen as provocation in the east of the country. In both Moldova and Ukraine, these laws have played a key role in the escalation of political conflict between ethnically heterogeneous regions, leading to civil war.

In March 1992 Moldovan nationalist forces tried to gain control of Transnistria, where 60% of the population is Russian or Ukrainian. The Moldovans were repelled, in part by the 14th Russian Army, which had its headquarters in Tiraspol. A ceasefire that June ended the fighting but froze the conflict. The current Russian military presence is estimated at 2,000, including 400-500 peacekeepers, stationed there under the 1992 agreement. The rest are part of the Operational Group of Russian Forces (OGRF), formerly the 14th Russian army.

Moldova and most western governments see their presence as unlawful. But Russia argues that the OGRF is needed to protect large weapon stockpiles in Transnistria (especially in the northern village of Kolbasna) dating back to the cold war. The Russian military presence on soil that is officially Moldovan is a significant problem for western politicians like US senator John McCain, who, wants to “accelerate the path of Georgia and Moldova into NATO” (2). There is no official rule against countries with a frozen (or even open) conflict joining NATO, but in practice Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova have little chance of winning the unanimous approval of the member states for their candidature while they have not found a solution to their dissident problems. There would be objections from several member states on the grounds that they could be drawn into conflicts under article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which provides for mutual assistance in the event that a member state is attacked.

‘Here, we are for Russia’

There was a renewed indication of feelings for Russia in Tiraspol when Crimea was annexed last year. Transnistria’s parliamentary speaker, Mikhail Burla, sent a request to the chairman of the Russian State Duma, Sergey Naryshkin, asking for Transnistria to become a part of Russia officially. Russia already supports Transnistria through free gas and pays pensions to the many elderly with Russian passports (180,000-200,000 Transnistrians hold Russian passports, about 35% of the population). Burla’s request was rejected.

One of those receiving a pension from Russia is Nadejda Gynj, 60, from Tiraspol’s Balka neighbourhood. “Here, we are for Russia,” she says. She thinks of herself as Russian: she was born in Odessa, 100km to the southeast, where some of her family still live. She used to work in a textile factory in Tiraspol. Her daughter has moved to Smolensk, in Russia. “Life here is better than in Moldova,” says Valentina Boiko, 53, who comes from her village outside the capital to sell bottled milk among the Soviet-era apartment blocks. That view is heard around Transnistria. In Moldova proper, since independence, there has been a huge rise in the cost of utilities and services, which has hit the poorest hard. A majority of Moldovans (62%) expect the EU association agreement to have a similar impact on living costs (3). This partly explains the success of pro-Russian parties at the parliamentary election of 30 November in Moldova proper. With 39% of the vote, they were only narrowly defeated by the pro-western block, which won 44%.

Clockwise from top left: statue of Lenin in Chobruchi; entrance to Tiraspol botanical garden; Vladimir Butuk, 74, and Mikhail Chigilashvili, 80, in the Balka area of Tiraspol

photo : Jens Malling

In Transnistria, ordinary people benefit from generous Russian aid. The territory’s economy combines elements of the socialist model inherited from the USSR and free-market initiatives. It has a welfare system funded by Russia alongside the oligarchic structures that have developed in many other post-Soviet societies, such as the Sheriff conglomerate owned by the magnate Viktor Gushan, who has established a near-monopoly in filling stations and supermarkets. The company logo is everywhere.

Transnistria’s economy is based on steel, cement, textiles and electricity. Nearly all the output (95%) of the four large industrial plants is exported (4) and the main trade partners are Moldova, Russia, Romania, Ukraine and Italy. Transnistria also exports to Germany, Austria and Greece. But the economy is far from self-sufficient. Without the funds generated by reselling Russian gas to consumers, remittances from expatriate workers and direct financial aid from Russia, the state could face bankruptcy. Russia’s support goes back to the beginning of Transnistria’s separation from Moldova and was stepped up significantly in 2008. Between 2008 and 2012 Russian aid was estimated at $27m annually, for pensions and food supplies for those most in need (5).

‘We don’t want war’

Gynj thinks her pension could be higher. It is 1,400 Transnistrian roubles a month ($115) but she pays nearly $90 in rent, so she supplements her income by sweeping the yard five days a week. Her husband fought in the war against Moldova 22 years ago. It was a painful experience and one she has rethought lately, now that Ukraine is going through something similar: “We don’t want war. We want peace. It’s hard to know what to think about the confrontation with the West, but Russia helps us.”

Transnistria’s location makes it particularly important to Russia, which is determined to stop EU and NATO expansion in countries of the former Soviet Union. “There is no doubt that the people of Transnistria are pro-Russian. The leaders of the republic hold that the association agreement between Moldova and the EU is not favourable to Transnistrian interests,” says Artem Fylypenko, director of the Odessa branch of the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies.

Kamil Całus, research fellow at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, says Russia is pursuing the same strategy in Transnistria as in eastern Ukraine, where the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk seceded on 7 and 27 April 2014: “Moscow’s plan for Transnistria is not to support its independence or its incorporation into the Russian Federation. On the contrary, Russia wants Transnistria to be a part of a federalised Moldova. The idea is to use Transnistria as a foot in the door, with a view to dominating all of Moldova and preventing it from turning to the West. The same goes for the new republics in the Donbass. Moscow wants them to be part of a federalised Ukraine. In that way it will try to use them to block Ukraine’s further integration into organisations like the EU and NATO.”

An illustration of Russia’s policy is the Kozak memorandum of 2003, its proposal for settlement of the frozen conflict. This would have given Transnistria a de facto right to veto important decisions from Chişinău, thanks to the composition of the Senate of the proposed federal republic of Moldova, where Transnistria and another pro-Russian region, Gagauzia, would appoint 13 out of 26 senators (6). The memorandum was also meant to legalise deployment of Russian troops on the territory of the federalised state until 2020. According to Całus, this would guarantee that Moldova could never join European or Atlantic structures.

Russia’s desire to apply this strategy to Ukraine was made clear in March last year, when the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, asked “that the US and its European partners accept its proposal that ethnic Russian regions of eastern and southern Ukraine be given extensive autonomous powers independent of Kiev” (7). But according to a 2014 report by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the Kiev government was ready only for decentralisation — expanding the powers of the local communities — not for changing the constitutional structure of the country (8).

Even so, there are some important differences between Transnistria and Ukraine’s Donbass region. The Donbass has ten times the population, a common border with Russia and, officially at least, no Russian soldiers. Unlike in Transnistria, main gas pipelines leading to Ukraine do not cross the separatist territories, depriving the separatists of an important bargaining chip (9). In the far larger Donbass area, Russia’s financial and military support would have to be significantly higher than in Transnistria. This makes the Donbass far harder for Moscow to handle. But the example of Transnistria shows that, short of having the West take serious account of its strategic interests, Russia can be satisfied with precarious situations.