As "The Russian Spring" spreads across various sub-regions of current non-Russian sovereign nations, Russian historian Sergey Lebedev warns that Transdniestria is “the first liberated part of Novorossiya,” Putin’s term for what he sees as a new state spreading across Ukraine into Moldova and perhaps beyond... here is what that region will look like... welcome to Novorossiya, or as one would translate it... New Russia.

As InterpreterMag believes,

Lebedev’s article highlights two directions of Putin’s policies, both of which should be of concern not only in the region but in Europe and the West more generally.

On the one hand, to the extent that Transdniestria is a model for some putative Novorossiya, it presents a very ugly picture.

Transdniestria under its breakaway government has been one of the most repressive places in the former Soviet space and has a thoroughly criminalized government that has been prepared to sell off the enormous arms cache there left over from USSR times to all and sundry, including terrorist groups.

And on the other, it underscores that Putin’s plans are far broader than Ukraine and involve a thrust into the Balkans. Were Transdniestria to be taken from Moldova and annexed to Russia, that would almost certainly lead to the collapse of the Moldovan state, the unification of part of it with Romania, the federalization of that country, and the extension of a Moscow-sponsored arc of instability into the Balkans.

...

Sanctions are not enough to “change Putin’s calculus,” as even American officials are beginning to acknowledge. And given the dangers that allowing him to move even further west into Moldova and beyond would inevitably entail, the time to contain and then reverse what he is doing is now.