U.S. analyst Vladimir Socor, of the Jamestown Foundation and Eurasia Daily Monitor, said that Moldova is lucky not to be a direct neighbor of Russia and the country is protected owing to the fact that Ukraine maintains its independence. In an interview for Radio Free Europe, the analyst said the Republic of Moldova is practically disarmed and does not have the resources needed to ensure an army able to fight, IPN reports.

“The Republic of Moldova has several units that can carry out particular tasks such as demining, for example, or patrolling in peacekeeping missions that are something else but not military missions. It is a defense and security dilemma in which we have been for over 20 years. But the geographic position, fortunately, saves Moldova. There are no reasons for alarm, not even for concern,” stated the analyst.

Vladimir Socor considers that Moldova or NATO do not have the resources needed for building a Moldovan army capable of fighting in the near future. “For now, we should only simply count on the lucky geographic position of the Republic of Moldova, especially owing to Ukraine. Ukraine must be supported unconditionally,” said the U.S. analyst.

Socor added that security guarantees are offered only within NATO. “What the NATO countries can do for the neighbors from the East, for Ukraine, first of all, and for Georgia, is to train and equip the Ukrainian, Georgian armed forces so that they are able to fight and put up resistance in a possible hybrid, combined aggression on the part of Russia,” he said.

The analyst also said that the neutrality status adopted by Moldova over 20 years ago was justified by the then circumstances. But nobody envisaged then the way in which the situation will develop now that Russia’s aggressive revanchism became more accentuated. Moldova’s neutrality lost its sense long ago because it guarantees nothing, being purely declarative.