Russian study says Moldova will become “object of conflict” between Ukraine and Romania

By 2017, Moldova will enter a process of dismemberment and become an “object of conflict” between Ukraine and Romania, which would demand legal rights over their historical inheritance, says the study “World around Russia: 2017. Outline of the Near Future” carried out by Russia experts. The study authors do not rule out an armed conflict in Transnistria and the extension of the NATO into the east, with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova joining it. According to the authors, the competition between Russia and the United States will become stiffer, especially because the U.S. will tend to help Ukraine join NATO and to solve the problem of unrecognized states to Moldova’s and Georgia’s advantage. The intention to solve this problem by force can lead to a direct conflict between Russia and Georgia, and less probable, between Russia and Moldova. Russia will deploy troops on the territory of the unrecognized states and will be accused of occupying or annexing them, the study says. The authors also say that the Commonwealth of Independent States will gradually break up. They consider that the name “former USSR” or “ex-Soviet space” is more appropriate for this area. The study “World around Russia: 2017. Outline of the Near Future” was carried out by a group of experts in foreign policy headed by Serghei Karaganov as part of the project “Foreign Development Conditions of Russia between 2007 and 2017”, implemented by the Council for Foreign Policy and Defense, the State University “Superior School of Economy”, the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences and others.