Moldova understands that its independence depends on the resistance of Ukraine and has no other solution but to support the actions and decisions adopted by the European Union and the states acting jointly with the EU, said the political pundit Igor Boțan during an IPN debate on Thursday.
Igor Boțan confirmed that during almost one year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Moldova has seen political threats caused directly or indirectly by the war, with protests organized to destabilize our country from within and derail it from its current course. “We have all seen where representatives of one particular part of the opposition went to ensure that they have the support if necessary. We have seen all kinds of fakes and misinformation about the energy crunch, or speculations about separate supplies of natural gas to some parts of Moldova that support the Shor Party. And we all know that since 2015 this party has had supporters who are customers of a chain of so-called social stores that sell goods at discounted prices and who thereby transform a rather important segment of citizens into customers who act on calls and who are remunerated for this excessive”, he declared.
The expert disagreed with the fellow panelist, DA Party president Dinu Plîngău, regarding a decrease in popular support for European integration. Igor Boțan noted that, according to the latest poll, a majority of Moldovans (53%) are for European integration, while only 24% support the opposite direction. “We must not forget that one million Moldovan citizens currently live in Europe. That would mean that almost three fourths of Moldovans support the European vector”, he added.
Igor Boțan says that the Moldovan society, including the authorities, were able to learn certain lessons from this war. According to him, strategically, the government did the right thing and aligned its position “on the right side”. Despite the very serious situation, there is a qualified, robust majority of citizens in favor of the European integration of Moldova. Igor Boțan said that there is no worrying trend regarding an increase in the rating of the Russian president Vladimir Putin among Moldovans; on the contrary, trust has decreased dramatically, which is confirmed by the numbers. “According to polls, the percentage of those who believe that in this war Russia is the aggressor is higher than those who believe otherwise. But for now, we are under pressure online. We saw how the Kremlin reacted to the blocking of two Russian-language websites in the Republic of Moldova, while in the Russian Federation about 50,000 websites that were also in Russian were closed”, said Igor Boțan.
At the moment, went on the expert, the big problem is the anti-European opposition. “There is a part of the opposition represented in Parliament that generally avoids talking about this war, its effects. And from this point of view, the opposition is in an extremely difficult situation. We would have gained a lot if the government and the opposition had said very clearly: we have different political visions, but as far as Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine goes, we are united. If it had happened like that, we would have had a completely different situation in the Republic of Moldova, a different starting point for discussions in society on the problems we face”, concluded Igor Boțan.
The debate was the 272nd installment of the “Political Culture” series, run by IPN with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
