MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. Moldova’s authorities are not interested in an aggravation of the Transnistrian conflict but provocations cannot be ruled out, Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, a senior research fellow at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) and an expert of the Valdai international discussion club, told TASS on Tuesday.
According to the expert, the United States and the United Kingdom have been seeking to whip up tensions around Transnistria. "The United States and Great Britain, along with Ukraine, have long been trying to ignite several more frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space, namely in Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. [Washington’s and London’s] logic is that Russia won’t have enough resources to take part in the normalization efforts in several regions concurrently, if the situation there aggravates," he said.
Moldova’s current authorities "are afraid of a possible aggravation," he said. "Moldova has too many problems now and there are doubts that the Moldovan army would be able to cope with it technically and physically. And it can be said quite definitively that Moldova has no sentiments linked with revenge in Transnistria."
According to him, such a situation does not suit Washington. "It may play a certain role, if provocations against Transnistria come not from the Dniester’s right bank but from, say, Ukraine," the expert explained. "Such incidents have already taken place, a kind of reaction test for Transnistria, Moldova, and for Russia. Such things are possible in principle, but not from the part of the current Moldovan leadership, which, as a matter of fact, is afraid of such a scenario."
Relations between the Dniester banks chilled dramatically after Maia Sandu was elected Moldovan President in 2020. She made several tough statements in respect to Tiraspol and said that unlike the country’s previous leaders, she was not going to meet with Transnistrian leader Vadim Krasnoselsky. Following the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in neighboring Ukraine, she said that progress in talks with Tiraspol was possible only after the situation in the neighboring country was settled.