After carrying out military maneuvers in Belarus, Crimea and along eastern Ukraine, the government of Vladimir Putin, which spoke publicly for the first time on the crisis this year, opened a new front for pressure on Kiev: a rare exercise. with Russian troops stationed in Transnistria.
The territory is a pro-Russian separatist enclave in Moldova, a former Soviet republic, and lies between the country and Ukraine. It has been autonomous since 1992 and has its status guaranteed by Kremlin troops.
Thus, a fourth front of concern is opened for the West, which fears a Russian invasion that Putin denies having any interest in promoting. Unlike previous maneuvers, the movement in Transnistria generates fear not of invasion, but of the search for a precedent for war.
The region of 500,000 inhabitants, two thirds of which are ethnic Russians, known as “the last Soviet republic” for maintaining symbols of the communist empire, does not in theory have the military muscle to threaten Ukraine. About 1,500 soldiers are based there, 440 of them members of a peacekeeping force, and the rest, responsible for storing a large amount of weapons in the place.
They are armed with just over a hundred armored vehicles and a handful of helicopters. But what they’ve trained is striking: invasion by foreign forces. In Western and Ukrainian military circles, there are fears that Russia will use a “false flag” operation, when its forces clandestinely infiltrate enemy territory and carry out a false attack against its own troops.
A remote place, recently known for hosting a football team that reached the finals of the Champions League, would be the ideal stage for such a movement. “The military practiced moving under cover, improvised disguises and firing positions,” said a Defense Ministry statement.
In a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Vikor Orbán on Tuesday, Putin said it was clear that the US and NATO, the Western military alliance, had chosen to ignore Russian concerns, as the Americans formally rejected the Kremlin demands on Ukraine.
“We are analyzing the US and NATO responses […], but it is clear that Russia’s concerns were ignored,” he said at a press conference, during which he said he hoped that dialogue with the West would continue to avoid “negative scenarios”. “Let’s imagine that Ukraine is a member of NATO. and start these military operations,” he said, referring to an attempt to regain annexed Crimea. “Should we go to war against NATO? Has anyone ever thought of this? Apparently no.”
Moldova is one of the countries on the former Soviet periphery that has given Putin a headache. Its president-elect in 2020, Maia Sandu, has repeatedly called for the departure of the Russians and the reintegration of Transnistria into its territory. Military maneuvers continue in Belarus, a Moscow-allied dictatorship that tightened its ties after opposition protests in 2020. Forces in Crimea and eastern Ukraine have ended their exercises, returning to positions close to the borders that so scare the West.
Since moving more than 100,000 troops around Ukraine, Putin has been playing the cards in Eastern Europe. A lingering problem from 2014, when he annexed Crimea, the pro-Russian rebel-held areas of eastern Ukraine, has been magnified into an attempt to redesign European security.
The Kremlin issued an ultimatum demanding that NATO, which expanded eastward after the Cold War, withdraw its forces from ex-Communist countries absorbed since 1997 and pledge never to let Ukraine into the club. In practice, Kiev will long be excluded because of its territorial problems with Russia. It is true that Estonia also had border disputes with Moscow when it joined NATO in 2004, but the time was different, and the feud never came to a head.
Be that as it may, Putin has made clear his strategic imperative not to want rival forces at his doorstep.
The US and NATO, as highlighted by the Russian leader on Tuesday, rejected the proposal, leaving open other avenues of negotiation, in a diplomatic exchange that has daily chapters – on Monday, the ring was the United Nations Security Council.
This Tuesday, there will be another conversation between the heads of Russian and American diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov and Antony Blinken, respectively. And Putin welcomes Viktor Orbán, the controversial Hungarian premier who has always been close to Moscow, to the Kremlin — generating predictable criticism across Europe.
Russian agency Interfax says Orbán has asked for an increase in Russian natural gas supplies to Hungary. About 40% of the product consumed in the European Union comes from Putin’s country, which leads to more cautious positions in the crisis of central nations, such as Germany.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is scheduled to visit Putin and, perhaps, Orbán in the middle of this month. American diplomacy has tried to dissuade him from this, citing the bad political moment and signs of support for the Russian – the Planalto rejects the pressure, remembering that it was invited to go.
Source: Folha
