When Moldova and Transdniestria were fighting, it was a weird war. The local military called it Drunken. Officers of the combatants met every night to have a drink together. They went away in the morning and opened fire on each other. At night, they got together again to drink for those they had met with the previous night and who they had killed.
Now that Moldova and Transdniestria are no longer at war, this peace is weird
too. A new generation has grown up in the self-proclaimed republic who are almost
sure that they live in Russia. A lot of young Trasndniestrians go to Chisinau
to study, have a good time or do shopping even though they despise everything
associated with the word “Moldova”. Transdniestrian state propaganda
has taught every citizen that the Moldovan president Voronin is a bloody dictator
eager to annex his country to Romania.
Vladimir Voronin comes from Transdniestria, by the way. His mother still lives
in the breakaway republic. Transdniestrian President Igor Smirnov is a Russian
citizen as well as most of Transdniestrian ministers, many of whom are appointed
in Moscow.
Russian peacekeepers are also deployed in Transdniestria. Moldovan authorities
have labeled them invaders. Russian arms lie at warehouses. Yet, Moscow pledged
back in 1999 to take away both the troops and military hardware. Meanwhile,
Russian diplomats are wedging an all-out war with the OSCE which demands that
Russia fulfill its commitment.
Russian politicians say that we can’t possibly dump Transdniestria because
many Russian citizens live there. They also claim that the West wants to strike
Russian troops out of the region because it is Moscow’s last outpost,
and if the 14th army is withdrawn completely, Russian will find itself in the
circle of enemies. Afraid of being surrounded by enemies, Moscow violently fights
war with the OSCE by disrupting sessions of foreign ministries for three years
running and with Moldova by imposing all possible economic sanctions on the
country.
The West assures that it does not want to besiege Russia and undermine its
influence but it is simply worried that too much arms are smuggled from Transdniestria
to Ukraine. Europeans went to ask Viktor Yushchenko after the Orange Revolution
to close down the frontier with Transdniestria to crack down on the smuggling.
But nothing happened. The whole of Transdniestria live on the smuggling, and
at least half of Odessa Region get their bread on that. That’s why arms
are still being smuggled in, through and later sold.
The Interpol states that the arms produced in Transdniestria later drift away
for terrorist groups worldwide. A major part of them go straight to Chechnya.
So, the West is actually accusing Russia (with some help of Ukraine) of supplying
Chechen militants with arms and, and wants to hampers it. Russia, in its turn,
condemns the West for striving to lock it in the circle of enemies. One thing
is not clear: is it a renewal of the Cold War or the continuation of the Drunken
War?
by Mikhail Zygar, columnist
kommersant.com
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