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| Anatol Țăranu | |
Last weekend, the Russian intelligence services launched a fresh project to destabilize the Republic of Moldova, which they named pretentiously, but without great imagination efforts “Pobeda”. On this occasion, the oligarch who fled from Moldovan justice, Ilan Shor, brought together his followers in a hotel hall in Moscow, where he also gathered for money a number of Moldovans from Moscow farmers’ markets in order to simulate crowding and declare, against such a background, the establishment of a “political bloc” of the Moldovan political opposition. This supposedly political construct included only parties cloned on the money of the convicted oligarch who found refuge in Moscow, including the banned party “Shor, “Chance”, “Revival”, “Alternative and Rescue Force of Moldova” and “Victoria”.
Many of the participants are in conflict with the law of the Republic of Moldova
In order to elevate the prestige of the assembly in question and justify the money of the FSB protectors spent chaotically, Shor, who is extremely inventive in various financial trick schemes, made the well-known Russian singers Baskov and Kirkorov sing at this “congress”. The latter sang several songs in “Moldovan” on the phonogram, rushing backstage to get fat fees of thousands of dollars. The amount of Shor’s fee for this performance is unknown, but both of the Russian famous singers would cry with envy if they knew how many dollars the tricky citizen of Israel with a residence permit in Chisinau appropriated.
Most of the speakers at Shor’s congress, including Gagauz governor Yevgenia Guțul, face various criminal charges in the Republic of Moldova, related to the illegal financing of the former Shor party and the anti-government protests of 2022-2023 with money from Moscow or from the bank fraud. Even if Guțul, Tauber and others reject the accusations, this doesn’t change much the credibility of their anti-government messages, given that the press publications described in detail the multiple cases of bribery of voters or protest participants.
Freedom looked for in prison
In the video images broadcast from the gathering held in Moscow, Shor appears on the stage of the event alongside the governor of the Gagauz autonomous unit, Yevgenia Guțul. The event was also attended by the speaker of the Comrat People’s Assembly, Dmitry Konstantinov, MP Marina Tauber, but also former Socialists, such as MP Vasile Bolea, as well as Shorist MPs Reghina Apostolova, Denis Ulanov, Vadim Fotescu, Alexandr Nesterovski, Irina Lozovan, Petru Jardan and also the leader of the “Chance” party, Alexei Lungu, and the president of the “Revival” Party, Natalia Parasca. As to the rest, the audience in the hall was represented by people living in Moscow or brought in a herd by plane from Chisinau, but the principle according to which all of them were delegated to the congress wasn’t announced by the organizers.
According to Marina Tauber, the Moldovan opposition held its congress in Moscow because only there it can speak freely and express its opinion. “Many in this hall, unfortunately, were and still are disadvantaged in terms of their rights, and we are very glad that here, in Moscow, on the territory of the Russian Federation, no one is closing our mouths and that we can freely express our opinion,” she said from the rostrum of the assembly. And this is said about Russia in which the most innocent street protest mounted to show disagreement with the position of the government is repressed with maximum brutality. In these circumstances, it is more than obvious that the Shorist assembly in Moscow has the endorsement of the Russian authorities and perfectly matches the Kremlin’s interest in bringing the Republic of Moldova back into its sphere of influence. Namely for this reason, the Shorists were allowed to hold the assembly in Moscow with the sole mission of articulating from the rostrum of the mentioned congress the anti-European and anti-Romanian narrative.
A future Soviet kolkhoz
The Congress in Moscow was organized in close dependence on the presidential election and the referendum on the European course, which will be held in the Republic of Moldova in October this year. The establishment at the congress of the political and electoral bloc with the Russian name “pobeda” perfectly fits the ideological postulate of the so-called Russian world regarding the seizure of victory in World War II by revanchist Moscow. The “pobeda” bloc, by its very name, tries to refer to the large-scale campaign promoted by the Russian Federation to falsify the historical truth, but also to use it for its propaganda purposes and to make an association between the war it is waging in Ukraine with the victory over fascism in World War II.
It’s true that this name “Pobeda” is also borne by a kolkhoz in the Territorial Administrative Unit (ATU) of Gagauzia, established in 1947, after the USSR occupied the current territory of the Republic of Moldova. But the cognitive association with the notion of kolkhoz seems to have further led the animators of the bloc to give the Shorist alliance this name. This association is symbolic, suggesting Moscow’s desire to turn again the Republic of Moldova, after the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, into a Soviet kolkhoz to the detriment of the European development model.
Primitive Romanianophobia
The speeches at the congress were stuffed with crass Romanianophobic theses. This mission to stir up anti-Romanian sentiments was entrusted to Gagauz officials who spoke from the rostrum of the assembly. Bashkan Guțul in her speech resumed the favorite theme of Russian propaganda about the Romanian passport of President Maia Sandu and from here the deduction about the danger of the Union with the imperative of the Gagauz autonomous unit’s right to secession was forced. It is equally true that no Russian propagandist or Gagauz secessionist is able to explain how the Gagauz enclave composed of three economically deprived districts can survive within the Romanian state in case of the Union of the Republic of Moldova with Romania.
A real sample of primitive Romanianophobia was the speech of the chairman of the Gagauz legislature, Dmitry Konstantinov, who exacerbated with the interwar “Romanian gendarme” argument, insisted on maintaining the name of “Moldovan language”, insinuated the forced Romanianization of national minorities in the case of the Union, acclaimed the Russian empire, which he absolved of the colonial seizure. Konstantinov even described the Republic of Moldova’s accession to the EU as having a “crap” effect for the Gagauz.
What political association with aggressor country means
The scaremongering with the Romanian gendarme was revived to camouflage the Russian Federation’s obvious interference in the internal affairs of the Republic of Moldova by organizing the Shorist congress in Moscow. Creating a screen behind which all the Moldovan politicians who gathered in the Russian Federation, the country that attacked Ukraine and has been waging an aggressive war on the neighboring state of the Republic of Moldova, could hide was another goal. The Russian aggression against Ukraine poses an existential danger to the Republic of Moldova too so that any political association with the aggressor country can be easily described as high treason.
The invoking of the Romanian factor by the congress in Moscow shows that the Romanianism is the main obstacle on the way to promoting the geopolitical interests of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Moldova. At the same time, the fierceness with which the Russian agents attacked the Romanianism in their speeches at the recent congress in Moscow betrays fears about the Moldovan society’s full assumption of the Romanian identity, which will certainly break for good the umbilical cord of our ties with the Russian world and guarantee the irreversibility of the European course for the Republic of Moldova. It remains only for this truth to be fully acknowledged also by the pro-European government in Chisinau, on which the intensity and consistency of state policies on the expansion and deepening of the Romanian national consciousness in Moldovan society depends.
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.