Russia is content with Transnistria's status quo, study

Russia does not want Transnistrian independence. Transnistria’s greatest value to Russia is in providing a source of leverage within Moldova, suggest experts Nicu Popescu and Leonid Litra in the study titled “Transnistria: A Bottom-Up Solution”. The two authors think that for the time being Russia is content with the status quo, as the current situation serves its goals of impeding Moldova’s European integration and maintaining Moscow’s influence in Moldova as a whole. Russia is in principle in favor of Moldovan reintegration, because it fears that Moldova without Transnistria would drift further away from its zone of influence. But it wants as much power as possible for Transnistria to ensure decisive influence in Moldovan affairs. Nicu Popescu and Leonid Litra note that Almost immediately after his appointment as Russia's special representative on Transnistria in March 2012, Dmitry Rogozin set a high bar for progress by saying, among other, that a future common state could only be formed “on a federative or confederative basis”. Rogozin has intensified the pressure on Moldova to agree to the opening of a Russian consulate in Tiraspol, an institution that would in fact most likely become a governor-general’s office. In the two experts' opinion, Russia is not keen on letting confidence-building measures advance too far, fearing that they could lead to a decreased Russian role in the region. The Russian hope is that a reintegrated federative Moldova could be heavily influenced by Russia via Transnistria. Moldova could perhaps even be induced to join the Russian-led Eurasian Union, which is Putin’s primary foreign-policy goal. Nicu Popescu and Leonid Litra note that, despite Russia’s important role in the region, its influence is not always exercised constructively. Some Russian actions have served unintentionally to antagonize Moldova and even parts of the Transnistrian elite. In Moldova, on the morning of 1 January 2012, a Russian peacekeeper was involved in the fatal shooting of a Moldovan civilian at a joint peacekeeping forces checkpoint. Instead of apologizing, then Russian ambassador to Moldova Valeri Kuzmin blamed the civilian victim, saying he was drunk. Similarly, the experts believe, Russia has mishandled its interactions with the Transnistrian political elite, for example, when it aggressively involved itself in “internal” politics in Transnistria by backing a losing candidate against Evgeny Shevchuk in the December 2011 elections. Russia’s ill-advised attempt to play favorites in the 2011 Transnistrian elections means that there is not much trust between Shevchuk and Russia, the study's authors suggest. Nicu Popescu and Leonid Litra conclude by saying that there is little chance of Russia agreeing to a sustainable solution to the conflict in the foreseeable future. At the same time, the EU and the US are supportive of conflict settlement in general and are diplomatically engaged with the resolution process, but they are clearly not making Transnistria a big enough priority to change Russia’s current calculation of its approach to the conflict. The titled “Transnistria: A Bottom-Up Solution” was published by IDIS Viitorul and the European Council on Foreign Relations, with the financial support of the Soros Foundation Moldova.