Moldova

It is one of Europe's smallest and poorest countries, and yet this tiny nation is taking on Europe's biggest share of Ukrainian refugees per capita. More than ...

Add in the fact Transnistria also hosts Europe’s biggest munitions depot and it becomes clear why this has the potential to become an explosive situation, opening a new frontier for Putin on the border with the EU and Nato. Tiny Moldova is not in either of these blocs, though seeing what’s happened to Ukraine it has just submitted an emergency application to join the EU - Putin’s crusade to their western border has given Moldova swift and remarkable clarity over which direction they would like their future to lie. It would be the equivalent of six million Ukrainians arriving in the UK, instead of the reality which is around 760. The kindness of strangers to Ukrainians fleeing home has been one heartwarming part of this tragedy, but in Moldova a refugee crisis is now looming.

While Moldova has never felt closer to Europe, it has also never felt more vulnerable to the Kremlin.

For all of Russia’s influence, the biggest power in Transnistria is a monopolistic company, Sheriff, that operates with scant oversight and controls everything from the gas stations to the supermarkets to the soccer club. The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. The war, said Iuri Sclifos, 57, who fought for the Moldovan side, was a “huge mistake.” Transnistria was born out of a brief early 1990s war amid the Soviet collapse — Moldova wanted independence and to outlaw Russian as an official language; Transnistria wanted to maintain Soviet ties. While Cyprus managed to join the E.U. despite a territorial dispute, many experts say Moldova would give credibility to its E.U. bid by resolving a frozen conflict that includes Russian troops. He said he lacks the money to leave even if he wanted to. In a visit Sunday to Moldova’s capital, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the country a “powerful” example of a democracy moving forward, not backward. Transnistrian newspapers and television channels scarcely mention the conflict — and people who live there have gotten the signal that the topic is off-limits. On a Moldovan Telegram channel set up to provide information on the conflict in Ukraine, Moldovan authorities have found themselves racing to debunk one rumor after the next. It is also a place that speaks to a strategy Russia had been using before its full-scale Ukrainian invasion: fostering beachheads of pro-Kremlin influence in former Soviet nations. Security analysts say Russia’s sluggish progress so far in Ukraine could reduce the chances that Putin seeks to enlarge the scale of the invasion. They reiterated a demand to create “two independent states.”

MODERATOR: (Via interpreter) Dear President Maia Sandu, dear Secretary of State of the United States of America Antony Blinken, we start off the briefing ...

This is indeed a challenge, and this is exactly the reason why we have requested the international assistance in the shape of financial assistance that’s all to compensate all the expenditures that we suffer in order to be able to help out those people. This is the will of the Moldovan people, and we welcome the pursuit of closer ties and greater integration. There is a major effort underway involving countries around the world to support refugees arriving from the Ukraine, but first and foremost, the burden has been on neighboring countries like the Republic of Moldova, like Poland and others that are the immediate responders. Our partnership addresses the key challenges of our time, the things that we should be working on and focused on, which is exactly another reason why this war of choice is such a terrible thing – it takes us away from things that we need to be working on together. QUESTION: (Via interpreter) Radu Osipov, public TV Moldova. I have a question for both Ms. Maia Sandu and Antony Blinken. Figures prove that in the first 10 days of the war, Moldova received the biggest amount of refugees from Ukraine. It’s again by comparison with the population of the Republic of Moldova. It’s a huge effort for our country. The United States delivered hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines to Moldova and millions of dollars in pandemic-related assistance. We want to continue the political dialogue, the security dialogue between our states; we want to develop projects which are directed towards the development of the energy resilience of our country; as well as to advance on the dialogue for justice and to collaborate in the field of the asset recovery. The United States wants to make clear our strong support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including the Republic of Moldova. We do need urgently assistance for the temporary accommodation of those people in order to offer them the most necessary items and also to be capable to redirect the inflow of refugees towards the European countries which have a high capacity to receive them. In the 30 years since Moldova and the United States began diplomatic relations, we’ve never faced a moment as urgent and as challenging as the one that we face today. Dear Secretary of State, the Republic of Moldova does need assistance and immediate and significant contribution of the international community so that our people and our economy can cope with these challenges and the inflow of refugees. We firmly condemned the military aggression against Ukraine and we called to peace from the very first hour of the military actions.

Moldovans fear that Transnistria, a region run by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Moldova, might be the next target after Ukraine.

Regardless of what happens in Ukraine, Russia might still seek to preserve the status quo in Transnistria, a Moldovan official said. At the school in Mr. Nikitenko’s village, about a third of the students are from an adjacent Transnistrian municipality. Any reports of Transnistrian aggression were a “shameless lie,” Mr. Krasnoselsky said in a statement Sunday afternoon. “The Eurasian continent is being reshaped,” Mr. Shirokov said. “They just want to live in peace.” At a local level, Moldovan and Transnistrian communities are often interdependent, and Transnistrians often use banks and medical centers in Moldovan-controlled towns. As recently as Sunday morning, Moldovan officials and foreign diplomats said there was no evidence the Transnistrian leadership was seeking to involve itself in the fighting. Transnistria “does not pose a military threat, does not hatch plans of an aggressive nature,” he added. In an interview, the Moldovan prime minister, Natalia Gavrilita, said her government faced more pressing challenges — such as the sudden influx of more than 230,000 refugees. A poor country of 2.6 million squeezed between Ukraine and Romania, Moldova is perhaps the most vulnerable. “Or will it be a flexible border?” He fiddled with a pen, removing and replacing its lid, staring at the screen as it showed the Russian advance toward Odessa, the nearest big city on the Ukrainian side.

Moldova's Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita has called on the United States to increase its humanitarian assistance to the country, as the number of refugees ...

And indeed we want to do everything we can to help you deal with the burden this is imposing.” “But we will need assistance to deal with this influx, and we need this quickly.” “As of this morning, we had more than 230,000 people who have crossed the border from Ukraine, and 120,000 stayed in Moldova – 96,000 of them are Ukrainian citizens.

Speaking alongside Moldovan President Maia Sandu on a tour through eastern Europe in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Blinken also said that the United ...

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Sandu said her government was monitoring the situation in the breakaway region of Transnistria in Moldova’s east, where an estimated 1,500 Russian troops are based, but had not seen significant changes since Russia's assault began. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Moldova pledging America's support to the small Western-leaning former Soviet republic that is coping with an ...

“We believe that this is an agenda to transform Moldova into a modern, prosperous European state based on the fundamental values of human rights and the rule of law.” “This is a subject of high vulnerability and we watch it carefully," Moldovan President Maia Sandu said. Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

Moldova's Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita spoke exclusively to CNN in the capital city Chisinau on Sunday about how Moldova is responding to the influx of ...

We have exceptions to this for humanitarian flights and for flights of refugees out of the country." "And I hope they seek truthful information and choose to oppose this war. "This conflict is not only affecting Ukraine and neighboring countries. We are currently seeing no signs of involvement in the military conflict. The flow of refugees is higher and faster than even predictions indicated." Already 230,000 people have crossed the Moldovan border from Ukraine. And about 120,000 have chosen to stay now," Gavrilita said during the interview.