Moldova, there is a risk of war. The analyst reveals Putin’s plan

On the contrary, it increases the risk that the war in Ukraine will widen. All eyes are on Moldova. According to Kiev, Russia wants to “provoke a political crisis” in the country and “start an internal conflict using Transnistria”. For the Russians, however, it is Ukraine that is preparing an “armed provocation” in Transnistria through “saboteurs disguised as soldiers of the Russian Federation”, to later blame Moscow. A hypothesis categorically denied by the government of Chisinau.

The fears that have grown in recent weeks have been confirmed by Dionis Cenusa, a Moldovan analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies in Vilnius, Lithuania: “Moldova faces a concrete Russian threat,” he said in an interview with The day. Even if for now a Russian military intervention in Moldova is excluded: “The conditions do not exist. In 2022 Russia, invading Ukraine, tried to advance in the south to take Odessa and establish a connection between Transnistria and Donbass. It was an ambitious plan and failed. Now there is no conditions to try again. Russia will use what forces it has left to take Donbass, which is its strategic objective, while the dream of an advance into Transnistria, crossing the Dnieper River again, is unrealistic. Maybe someone in the Kremlin would like it, but they don’t have the strength and they know it.”

The reasoning for now is that Moscow would instead aim to fuel street demonstrations to try to “democratically” overthrow the pro-Western government in Chisinau: Moscow wants to have a neutral government that withdraws its application for EU membership and does not threaten the interests Moscow geopolitics. “There are all the conditions for them to try, even if the protests are not very extensive. Russia wants to create instability and take advantage of it,” explained Cenusa.