Transnistrian Conflict on September 19 – October 18, 2009

Concern of mediators

The process of the new Government formation in Moldova left behind the Transnistrian settlement efforts. In this context, representatives of the parties involved in the “5+2” Transnistrian settlement format encouraged political parties from the Alliance for European Integration (AIE) to “reach a compromise and build a stable structure of the leadership capable to focus on up-to-date social-economic goals.” Such a call was released during the September 15 Moscow meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigore Karasin and the head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, Philippe Remler, who discussed the agenda of the meeting between mediators and observers of the Transnistrian settlement process scheduled for the second half of September in Chisinau. On the other hand, the decision of the new AEI leadership to dissolve the Ministry of Reintegration made Transnistrian observers speculate that the Transnistrian problem will be further important but not foreground. Transnistrian political researcher Andrei Safonov was quoted by INFOTAG agency as saying that “given the distribution of functions, redistribution of financial inflows which last from months to one year, the union or normalisation of relations cannot be a primordial task… In these circumstances, the status quo could be maintained that means independent development of certain state institutions on each bank of the Dniester.”

Transnistrian regime gets ready to resist to enemies

In the second half of September, just before the investiture of the new Government of Moldova, a military exercise was organised in Transnistria to mobilise troops of bomb and transmission experts, anti-aircraft artillerists, and doctors. This way, the Transnistrian general staff charged itself to test the applicability of military doctrine, simulating “the deployment of military troops to resist to aggression in the light of military actions from North Caucasus during the last war.” The exercise focussed on testing the reserve military “for the worst” — the eventual penetration of the enemy “into the defence, with the enemy” being “terminated by various weapons, inclusively «Grad» reactive fire system”.

Preparations for referendum

The Transnistrian region is organising “public talks” on holding a referendum to modify the constitution. The purpose of changes is to adjust constitutional norms of Transnistria to Russian laws and particularly focus on revising competences of constitution, introducing the government instead of cabinet of ministers led by president, as well as instituting a two-chamber parliament.

Enhancing the small business rate in Transnistrian economy is required

A research by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Transnistria indicates the necessity of enhancing the small business rate in the gross domestic product of the region from 13 percent up to 20 percent the next three years. According to a research, legal regulations on small business development are out-of-date. Research developers recommend that small businesses should be grouped into micro (up to 10 employees), small (up to 50 employees) and medium, and each of them should enjoy distinct categories of facilities and advantages. They invoke the European Commission’s recommendations from 2003, which say that enterprises with less than 250 employees should be included into the category of small and medium businesses. Given the specifics of the three categories of enterprises, distinct statistical records should be accepted in order to enable them to enjoy appropriate sustenance mechanisms. As well, situation in the individual business sector represented by more than 15,000 enterprises should be made clear, and taxation, reporting and sanctioning procedures should be simplified much.

Expectations of Tiraspol authorities regarding Transnistrian settlement evolutions

Representatives of Transnistrian authorities said that they are not impressed by the propaganda-making machine of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM), which claims that eventual dangers for the Transnistrian settlement process come from the Alliance for European Integration (AIE). Thus, Transnistrian foreign minister Vladimir Yastrebcheak stated that the only problem is that AIE does not take into consideration the yielding made by former president Vladimir Voronin by signing the Barvikha Declaration on March 18, 2009, which says that the Moldovan authorities do not demand any longer the withdrawal of the Russian military presence from the region. With the invoked exception, Yestrebcheak notes that the new Moldovan authorities do not propose anything new and Voronin previously demanded the withdrawal of the Russian military presence from the region, while the yielding concerned being made in the electoral context with approximately two weeks before the April 5, 2009 elections. Yastrebcheak reiterated Transnistria’s position concerning the withdrawal of the Russian military troops. He insists that the commitments assumed by the Russian Federation at the November 1999 Istanbul OSCE Summit were conditioned with the political settlement of the Transnistrian conflict. Even more, Yastrebcheak assured that Russia’s commitments became unimportant when it introduced the moratorium on the CFE Treaty. In this context, Yastrebcheak stressed that Russia had fulfilled its commitments by withdrawing the heavies of the former Army 14. Hence, it had withdrawn 50,000 weapon units, 800 artillery units, 120 tanks etc. from Transnistrian region. As regards the military, Russia pulled out 1,500 out of 2,500 soldiers and officers of the operative group of the former Army 14, and there are only 400 soldiers left in the region out of 2,700 military. However, Yastrebcheak was surprised that the former communist government had urged Russia to withdraw all military presence from the region, and the Moldovan liberal democrats want the same at present. He said that the situation will be clear by 2011, when the ten-year term of the basic Moldovan-Russian Treaty will be over. This treaty should be extended or cancelled, and then it would be clear how the Moldovan-Russian relations will develop and what would be the place of Transnistria in these relations. According to Transnistrian authorities, it is fundamental in facts to make clear if the new Chisinau Government would like to respect the July 22, 2005 on the Transnistrian settlement, which means to assimilate the PCRM inheritance or would start looking for a more realistic framework. The Transnistrian leadership is rather sceptical that the new Moldovan authorities would renounce to the 2005 legal principles and that’s why it will focus on resuming the activity of “working groups and protecting interests of people who hold the Moldovan citizenship, too.” At the same time, Yastrebcheak stated that the dissolution of the Reintegration Ministry by the new Moldovan authorities does not have any importance, as Transnistria did never cooperate with this ministry, with contacts between the two parties developing at the level of representatives of the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria. In this light, it is clear that the Moldovan authorities decided to empower Deputy Premier Victor Osipov to represent Chisinau in relations with Transnistria and negotiation process within the new Government of Moldova.

Moldovan communists trying to regain the Transnistrian trump in internal political race

The Transnistrian media has also covered the change of turn-out by PCRM, which after eight years of rule restarted using the Transnistrian problem as trump in the propagandistic battle, this time against the Alliance for European Integration (AIE). It noted that after eight years of PCRM governance the Transnistrian conflict was not settled but even worse, the negotiation process was frozen. The intentions of PCRM to scare Transnistrian citizens with eventual destabilisation of situation, as AIE aims to bring Moldova closer to NATO are described as hypocrisy. In this context, Transnistria’s mouthpiece “OLVIA-press” noted that the Moldova-NATO Individual Action Plan was accepted under the PCRM rule and military exercises with the participation of NATO — Cooperative Longbow/Lancer — 2006, Medсeur-2007, etc., were organised in the Republic of Moldova.

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