Author: Dionis Cenusa
Russia needs to have friendly countries in the regions that border with the EU and belong to the Eastern Partnership. By showing interest in normalization of relations with Moldova, Russia follows various local goals, such as fortifying the pro-Russian actors and re-establishing the leverages of dependencies.
More than that, a friendly Moldova can serve Moscow’s bigger objective to disturb and confuse Ukraine, and weaken support for Western sanctions against Russia. Such goals don’t seem at all unachievable looking at Russia’s returning to European Council’s PACE and the “green light” to re-join G8.
Russia’s gains from the political changes in Moldova has several dimensions: Firstly, Plahotniuc’s regime was toppled through Russia-engineered bluff arranged with President Dodon, which succeded to manipulate the Democratic Party and ACUM together with public opinion at home and abroad. Russia removed the main political obstacle – the oligarch’s ’vertical of power’ – to upgrade its own influence in Moldova for the first time since the failure of the ”Kozak memorandum” in 2003.
Secondly, the pro-Russian forces achived more legitimicy. Also the recently revised electoral law allows external financing of the political parties, including by Moldovan migrants, from the West, but also from Russia, which may help the Socialists. In addition, Dodon can be further helped by Russia through the signing a social agreement to allow retired Moldovan migrants to obtain pensions from the Russian state (Tass, 30 July 2019) Thirdly, with the support of ACUM bloc, the state system is being cleaned from Plahotniuc’s people and replaced with associates of the Socialists. Dodon has also re-established his control over the intelligence service (Radio Free Europe, 18 June 2019), from which he had been obstructed by the Democratic party after his election in 2016. Such decisions facilitate Russia’s access to information on internal Moldovan affairs.
Fourthly, the remodeled political situation improves the positioning of the pro-Russian entities, such as Gagauzian autonomy. The executive of the Gagauzian autonomy (‘bashkan’), Irina Vlah, re-elected on 30 June, started her new mandate with a demand for more competences for the autonomy’s prosecutor relative to the central authorities (IPN, 30 July 2019). Such developments in Gagauzia could further encourage the Transnistrian separatist authorities to endorse the idea of a special status, as a final stage of the conflict resolution.
Last but not least, Russia has embraced the goal of normalization of bilateral relations. President Dodon brought more than 500 businessmen to the Russia-Moldova economic forum in 2018, and plans to do the same on 19-20 September 2019 (Presedinte.md, 21 August 2019). A larger presence of Russian business can obtain a political dimension at some point, and is therefore a good longerterm investment.