“In fact, instead of finding appropriate solutions to support the veterans, the leaders of the Moldovan Socialists focused on own interests – illegal financing of their party with money provided by Russia’s Gazprom, by $700,000 – 800,000 a month. This money that the Socialist leader failed to get was enough to raise the allowances for war veterans tenfold, from 10,000 lei to 100,000 lei (~€5,000)...”
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Allocations vs. congratulations
In the Republic of Moldova, given the modest capacities of the state, a legal framework was designed to support different categories of veterans, especially war veterans. The designing and developing of the given legal framework became a natural process of expressing gratitude and care for those who, in virtue of the circumstances, had to go through the ordeal of war and to survive. That’s why there is no doubt that the initiatives to help the veterans are welcome, if they meet the necessities of beneficiaries, not of the shrewd guys who propose them.
The point is a strange phenomenon started to take shape recently – care for the veterans is ostentatiously shown by the Communist-Socialist opposition. This way, the public opinion was recently surprised by the initiative of the group of the Bloc of Communists and Socialists (BCS), which put forward a legislative proposal to allocate by a lump sum of 100,000 lei to the veterans of the Great Patriotic War, on the eve of Victory Day.
The initiative to raise the one-off allowance for war veterans tenfold is not unique. Earlier, in 2021, the BCS also proposed a bill concerning war children, referring to all those who were younger than 19 on September 2, 1945. These total approximately 107,500 and social guarantees for them were envisioned, like a monthly payment of 500 lei, concessions for trips by public transport, treatment tickets, etc. The shrewdness of BCS resided in the fact that it estimated the cost of the given initiative at 54 million lei a year. In fact, elementary calculations show that its cost is of over 645 million lei (107,551 persons x 500 lei x 12 months = 645,306,000 lei).
For the sake of propagandistic effects, the authors of the BCS bill made a calculation mistake, diminishing the figure approximately 12(!) times. But this matters less. What really matters is the public manifestation of care for the war children. An innocent question appears here, why is the care of the Moldovan Communist-Socialists expressed suddenly when these become part of the opposition? The Socialists ruled for about two years, in November 2019 – August 2021, and could have implemented all their projects to support the aforementioned categories. The truth is that while in power, the Socialist leaders were preoccupied with the avoidance of additional budget costs, while the care for veterans was expressed by congratulations at home.
Support for veterans in CIS space and by allies of anti-Hitler coalition
It is very useful to compare the allowances the war veterans from different states receive on the occasion of Victory Day – May 9. In 2022, for example, a series of states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on the occasion of May 9 provided lump sums to veterans, specifically: Kazakhstan – $2,200; Russia – $138; Belarus – $543; Moldova – $530; Uzbekistan – $1,339; Tajikistan – $240; Azerbaijan – $882 etc.
Unlike the CIS space, in the states of the anti-Hitler coalition, the support for the war veterans is permanent for the veterans who risked their life and health to be able to constantly enjoy the care of the state and society, not only occasionally. This way, any British veteran gets pension depending on the military rank and severity of wounds. The monthly payments vary and range from approximately $2,200 to even $10,000. If necessary, the state offers additional assistance to help the veterans. In the U.S., the veterans get a monthly bonus to the pension of about $1,200. In contrast, in Russia, which is unimaginably rich, the veterans get tens of times less. That’s why, it was curious to see what the war veterans in Russia want to get to improve their living conditions. For the purpose, there was designed a special electronic platform that showed that the Russian veterans who reached over 90 dream of obtaining either a washing machine, a fridge or a TV set or of being helped to repair their homes, etc.
From the above-mentioned data, we can deduce that a series of CIS states, some of which are rather poor, can be more generous in relation to the war veterans than Russia, where the Putinist regime invented new symbols that are foreign to the war veterans during six decades, like the ribbon of Saint George or all kinds of marches during which they now started to chant “We can repeat!. This is the slogan through which the Putinist regime started the preparations for a new war, believing that it would be a victorious one. Indeed, on February 24, 2022, Russia repeated the war horrors by invading the neighboring state Ukraine. It is one of the causes that make the support for war veterans in Russia be about eight times lower than in Kazakhstan or four times lower than in the Republic of Moldova, which does not benefit from extraction rent or sale of natural resources.
Apropos, among those who suffered from the “We can repeat!” are also the veterans of World War II. This way, on the eve of May 9, 2022, the Russian army bombarded a locality in Ukraine, destroying the house of a veteran who one month later died as a result of injuries and sufferings. The fate of a former detainee of a Nazi camp, who survived the Nazi horror but was killed at the age of 96 by carriers of the ribbon of Saint George, I even more dramatic. It happened in about a month of the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are many such stories. This is how the slogan “We can repeat!” works and how the carriers of the ribbon of Saint George act.
Pleading for fate of veterans or for own interests?
The Communist-Socialist coalition of the Republic of Moldova is hypocritical not only because it dares to speculate with figures, proposing to raise the allowances for veterans ten times or to introduce the allowance for war children – things that they could have implement two-three years ago, when they governed the country, when there was no war and the prices of energy rejoices were four-five times lower, if they had been really interested in them. The Communist-Socialist hypocrisy is also emphasized by their categorical refusal to state their attitude to the ongoing occupation war that destroyed the fates of tens of millions of people, making hundreds of thousands of victims, at a time when they are preoccupied with a war that took place 80 years ago. But this war implies huge risks to the security of the Republic of Moldova.
If the Moldovan Communist-Socialists had been really interested in the fate of veterans, their leaders would have pleaded, for example, in favor of the constitution within CIS of a common fund for war veterans so that these could benefit from sufficient allowances for decent living, as the veterans would have been considered common for the whole CIS space given that they were sent to war by the same country. In fact, instead of finding appropriate solutions to support the veterans, the leaders of the Moldovan Socialists focused on own interests – illegal financing of their party with money provided by Russia’s Gazprom, by $700,000 – 800,000 a month. This money that the Socialist leader failed to get was enough to raise the allocations for war veterans tenfold, from 10,000 lei to 100,000 lei (~€5,000).
