| NOVYE IZVESTIA: TRANSNISTRIA IS LOCKED UP 
Ukraine and Moldova are blocking a rebellious region.
The joint Moldovan and Ukrainian boundary and customs control posts will have been acting since this week at the border of Transnistria and Ukraine. On Friday representatives of the corresponding services in Chisinau and Kyiv signed a special agreement. For Transnistrian residents it means a full economic blockade. In this situation Tiraspol relies only upon Russia. According to the information of “Novye Izvestia” this support is promised to the pro-Russian region.
Chisinau has been trying to control the Transnistrian area of the Moldova and Ukraine’s boundary (1222 km) since 1999. Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin calls Transnistria “a black hole” through which smuggled goods including weapons and drugs are going. Moldova’s authorities estimate the volume of the illegal traffic at $ 2 billion. Although Kyiv regards this figure as overestimated, it supports the intentions of Moldova’s authorities to control the boundary regime. Besides, the European Union insisted that the Ukrainian authorities should help Moldova. Moreover, the EU will take part in the monitoring of this borderline. Dmitriy Tkach, the ambassador-at-large of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine who deals with the issues of the Transnistria conflict settlement, told the “NI” correspondent about it. According to him, the EU countries will send their boundary experts and representatives to the region. The representatives will work with people in order to convince them of the benefits from uniting with Moldova. These measures are covered by the plan on the region’s democratization that Ukraine has worked out. Moldova and the OSCE have approved it. According to the plan, the elections to the Transnistria’s Supreme Council should be held this fall. They are to be controlled by the international observers. If it occurs the Parliament of the unrecognized Transnistrian Republic will be legitimate. It will allow Chisinau to carry on peace negotiations with the Parliament rather than with the Transnistria’s President.
We should remind that from 1992 on Transnistria’s leadership hasn’t maintained relations with the Moldova’s authorities. Most part of Transnistria is being controlled by the joint peace-keeping forces with the Russians at the head. Besides, the former 14th Russian army units are deploying in the region. This fact annoys Moldova as well as the EU and the USA. They insist that Russia should keep the OSCE Istanbul Agreements and have left that region by the end of the year.
Russia is not going to withdraw its troops. There are some reasons for that. Firstly, Tiraspol is blocking the transportation of Russia’s military property including 20 thousand tons of weapons and ammunition from its territory. Secondly, the Russian army should protect interests of its compatriots and the Russian citizens (there are 100 thousand Russian citizens in the region). The Head of the Department on Interregional Relations and Cultural Contacts with Foreign Countries under the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Modest Kolerov confirmed this position a week ago in Chisinau. He said that nowadays Russia’s interest in Moldova is nothing but the Russian diaspora’s interests. He added that to settle the Transnistria conflict on the principle of democratization, as Moldova and Ukraine demand, is impossible “until Moldova is democratized itself”. This statement caused a scandal in Chisinau since it was taken as Russia’s effort to interfere in the political process in Moldova in order to remove President Vladimir Voronin from his office.
As regards the revolution in Moldova ideated by the Kremlin it is an excess. However, the Moldovan politicians have the grounds to be worried. Moscow is taking steps forward. Russia is going to back up Transnistria in its confrontation with Moldova. Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Transnistrian Republic Grigory Marakutsa told the “NI” correspondent that when he was in Moscow he had been assured that Russia would help the Transnistrian authorities. Considering that Transnistria would not be able to withstand the economic blockade for a long time, Moscow has promised to render financial assistance. According to the information received by “NI” in the Transnistrian government, the humanitarian assistance can amount to $ 22 million. However, the support promised by Moscow may not be only economic.
On Sunday [July 3] at the international forum “Europe: results of the changes” held in Moscow Modest Kolerov said that “the problem of recognition of sovereignty of the unrecognized republics is the most important and fundamental, it should be solved”. The way of recognition is as follows: it is necessary to make the elections in those republics legitimate. It is easy to forecast how Moldova and Georgia’s authorities will react to the new initiatives of the Kremlin (if Mr. Kolerov is a mouth-piece of the Kremlin of course, rather than he expresses his point of view). But it is not the point. Moscow more than once encouraged the regions like the Transnistrian Republic. Then it handed them over. This happened to Ajaria. In 2000 Russia supported Vladimir Voronin when he declared economic war on Transnistria. But for Ukraine that came out against the blockade of the region where more than 200 thousand ethnic Ukrainians lived and about a half of them held the Ukrainian passports the local population would have gone to wrack and ruin. Nowadays the situation is different. After Viktor Yushchenko came to power Ukraine became the friend of Moldova, while Russia became the enemy. Now Ukraine is trying to put pressure upon the Transnistrian authorities so that they could make it up with Moldova on its conditions. And Russia is trying to protect interests of Transnistrian people. Transistria do not care whether Russia or Ukraine will patronize. For the unrecognized Republic the most important thing is not to become the constituent entity of Moldova. And Transnistria can do nothing but believe its patron. Now Russia plays this role.
Svetlana Gamova
“Novye Izvestia”, July 4, 2005
Translated by “Eurasian Home”
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