The desire to integrate into the European Union is a fragile option in Moldova, a candidate country for membership from June 2022, as indicated by the referendum held on Sunday in this country. The plebiscite was limited to inquiring about the convenience of incorporating the path towards the EU in the State Constitution and the result (50.46% of voters were in favor and 49.54% against) showed that, to stir up tempers against the EU, Moscow can rely on internal Moldovan forces and not only separatists and independence supporters.
In the campaign against President Maia Sandu’s pro-European policies, Gagauzia (an autonomous region of Moldova) has been the standard bearer of pro-Covid positions, while the secessionist region of Transnistria has played a more inert role. These positions are partly the result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has transformed Transnistria (sandwiched between the Dniester River and Ukrainian territory) into a space of limited accessibility and reduced functionality for Moscow.
Just under half a million inhabitants reside in Transnistria (culturally Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan), among whom Moscow and kyiv distributed around 220,000 and 100,000 passports respectively. About 134,000 citizens of Moldova live in Gagauzia. In Transnistria, 37% of those who voted in the referendum did so in favor of Europe; in Gagauzia only 5%.
Unlike Transnistria, which has maintained secessionist positions since 1990, Gagauzia found its place in the State of Moldova as an autonomy that welcomes a community of descendants of Christianized Turkic nomadic peoples (of Orthodox religion and Turkic language). To the highest local political authority (bashkan) corresponds to a position in the Government of Moldova, but the relations between Maia Sandu and the current bashkanYevgenia Gutsul, are very tight.
Gutsul maintains an energetic pro-Russian course and cultivates privileged relations with Moscow, politically and economically, so that the agricultural products of his region, unlike those of the rest of Moldova, find a receptive market in Russia. In his active campaign against the referendum, Gutsul has used the image of President Vladimir Putin, with whom he met last March in Russia and whom he congratulated profusely on his recent birthday. The bashkanShe is not an independentist, she emphasizes her status as a Moldovan citizen and also cultivates her relationship with Türkiye.
Regarding Transnistria, in 2006, its authorities already called a referendum in which, according to them, 97% of the local population voted for integration into Russia. Geography, however, does not make it easy, unless the Russian troops invading Ukraine reached Odessa. Today, Transnistria is a land of emigration, where part of the inhabitants moved to Russia and another part to the West.
The tightening of travel conditions at the edge of the war in Ukraine has made the “citizens” of Transnistria (whose local passports are not recognized by any country, not even Russia) to be very active in their search for alternative documents. “Moldovan passports are not popular here, but the war and Sandu’s rise to power make them essential to survive,” says an interlocutor contacted in Tiraspol (the capital of Transnistria). These Moldovan passports, which a part of the local population disdained in the past in favor of Russian passports, are what today give them the possibility of voting in the referendum and not precisely to support Moldova’s pro-European option.
On the other hand, in Transnistria there are many passport collectors, whether Russian (which Moscow distributed generously for years), those from Ukraine (which kyiv also distributed), those from Romania (which facilitated emigration to the EU in case that the interested party could certify the existence of a Romanian ancestor) and those of Bulgaria (which allowed an option similar to the Romanian one). To vote as Moldovans in Gagauzia, things are simpler. However, the moment of truth has not yet arrived for Moldova, whose political system is parliamentary, and it is foreseeable that the decisive battles between pro-Europeans and pro-Russians will occur in 2025, when legislative elections are held in the country.
In addition to affirming its positions through the Moldovan diaspora in Russia and through the pro-Russian sectors in Moldova, Moscow uses a new argument that we could call urbanization, consisting of convincing the electorate that the path to Europe leads to war, misery and ruin, similar to what is happening in Ukraine. Ukrainization, understood in this way, has also been used in Georgia by the ruling party in that country before the parliamentary elections next Sunday. In both Moldova and Georgia, Russia, the former metropolis of the Russian Empire, plays the same game to retain them in its sphere of influence.