A breakaway region of Moldova asks Russia for protection

A thin strip of land wedged between Ukraine and Moldova asked Russia on Wednesday to provide the country with protection, repeating in miniature the highly flammable scenario playing out in the regions of eastern Ukraine now occupied by Moscow.

The call for Russian protection by Transnistria, a self-declared but internationally unrecognized microstate on the eastern bank of the Dniester River, escalated tensions dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The largely Russian-speaking region broke away from Moldova and established its own national government in 1992 after a short war.

The call to Moscow was made during a special session of the Transnistrian Congress of Deputies, a Soviet-style meeting that meets rarely. During its last session, in 2006, the assembly asked for annexation by Russia, although Moscow did not act on that request.

The latest call to Russia came a day before a state of the nation speech in Moscow by President Vladimir V. Putin.

The Transnistria Congress called on the two houses of the Russian parliament to take unspecified measures “to protect Transnistria in the face of increasing pressure” from Moldova, as “more than 220,000 Russian citizens reside permanently in the region .”

Russian news reports quoted Vadim Krasnoselsky, the enclave’s professed president, as requesting Moscow’s help because “a policy of genocide is being applied against Transnistria.” Similar inflammatory and evidence-free claims were made for years by Russian allies in eastern Ukraine and used by Moscow to help justify the 2022 invasion.

But Transnistria long stopped short of asking for annexation by Russia – something Moldova already feared – and also called for help from the European Parliament, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Red Cross.

The First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s International Affairs Commission, Aleksei Chepa, told the Interfax news agency that Transnistria was asking for economic, not military, aid.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Moldova and the West of unnecessarily stoking tensions with speculation about a possible Russian annexation. “NATO is literally trying to shape a new Ukraine,” she said, adding that this was “contrary to the attitude of a majority of the Moldovan population.”

Unlike the Ukrainian regions that Putin declared part of Russia last year, Transnistria is hundreds of kilometers from the Russian border and surrounded on all sides by Ukraine and Moldova, both of which are hostile to Moscow.

Russia has a military base in the enclave, manned by a suspected peacekeeping force of about 1,500 men, which has been stationed in the area since 1992.

But the force, which previously received equipment and food through the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, has been short of supplies since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Ukraine closed its border with Transnistria, leaving Moldova, whose internationally recognized borders include the territory, as the only way in or out.

Tensions over Transnistria have risen and fallen since the early 1990s, when the country became one of several so-called frozen conflicts sparked by Moscow’s withdrawal from the empire during the collapse of Soviet power. It is recognized as a state only by Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two other former regions of the Soviet Union that have also declared themselves states and do not have international recognition.

Until recently, the risk of new conflict seemed remote due to extensive commercial and other exchanges between the enclave and Moldova.

Transnistria’s under-pressure government has grown increasingly worried about its future in recent weeks, accusing Moldova of “destroying” its economy and “violating human rights and freedoms in Transnistria.”

The complaints echoed those of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which, backed by Russian troops and intelligence officers, declared themselves separate states in 2014 and helped provide a pretext for Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Some analysts believe that Transnistria’s protection request is primarily aimed at destabilizing the pro-Western government in Moldova, which Moscow has been trying to overthrow for months through proxies like Ilan Shor, an exiled Moldovan millionaire and convicted fraudster.

Mr. Shor, who fled to Israel to avoid a prison sentence for fraud and money laundering, financed anti-government protests and a pro-Russian politician’s successful gubernatorial campaign in southern Moldova last year. He and his supporters are demanding that Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, abandon its ambitions to join the European Union, which offered the country “candidate status” in 2022, and instead join a Russian-led economic bloc.

Anton Trojanovsky reporting contributed.