Moldova, Transnistria and Russia
Plus, sigh of relief in Brussels as Emmanuel Macron retains French presidency
Hello! I’m hoping that you have a pleasant weekend ahead. This week we’re looking at what is happening in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, and what it means in the larger context of the Russian invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
We’re also looking at how the French political scene has just started heating up despite Emmanuel Macron retaining the French presidency, Pakistan’s new foreign minister and some reforms to the veto power held by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Let’s get started.
This day that year
1997: The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 entered into force. The convention outlaws the production, stockpiling, transfer and large-scale use of chemical weapons, except for research and medical purposes. All signatories were required to destroy their stockpile of chemical weapons.
1991: A major cyclone hit south-eastern Bangladesh with winds reaching 260 kilometres per hour. At least 138,800 people were killed and millions were left homeless.
Alarmed
If there’s any place in the world that still looks like the Soviet Union. It has to be Transnistria. In fact, its capital city Tiraspol boasts of Soviet-era buildings and even a statue of Vladimir Lenin (even as a lot of Lenin statues were torn down in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed). It still has a hammer-and-sickle on its flag and coat of arms.
Transnistria is not really a country, although it functions like one. It’s a very narrow strip of land situated on the eastern bank of the Dniester River bordering Ukraine. The region with a population of around 400,000 (disputed) has its own government, military and currency. But no country in the world, not even Russia, recognises Transnistria as an independent nation. For the world, it's a breakaway state which is a part of Moldova. That explains why people in Transnistria hold an additional citizenship — either Russian, Ukrainian or Moldavian.
When the Soviet Union started collapsing, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed in Transnistria with a hope that it would allow the region to remain part of the Soviet Union (or Russia) if the rest of Moldova becomes independent like Ukraine, or merges with neighbouring Romania. In 1991, Moldova did become an independent nation. This led to a brief conflict between Transnistria and the rest of Moldova and a tripartite ceasefire was signed (between Moldova, Transnistria and Russia) in 1992. While the fighting had stopped, the question of Transnistria’s independence or unification with Moldova was never solved. This is very much a frozen conflict.
Over the last 30 years, Moldova and Transnistria have taken divergent paths. Moldova moved closer to the European Union (EU) and the West. In fact, soon after Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine, Moldova formally applied for EU membership. As the country’s constitution guarantees neutrality, it hasn’t actively sought to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) unlike Ukraine. Part of the reason is that it’s further away from Russia and probably didn’t feel as intimidated as Ukraine and Finland do. However, it does have an Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO (doesn’t amount to membership benefits).
On the other hand, Transnistria — having Russians as its largest ethnic group (though there are a considerable number of Moldavians too) — aligned itself with Moscow. About 1,500 Russian soldiers are believed to be currently stationed at a decommissioned Soviet-era garrison in Transnistria for a “peacekeeping” role under the Joint Control Commission. That number can be raised to 2,400 according to the agreement. The Russian troops also guard 22,000 tons of military equipment and ammunition at an arms depot in Cobasna on Transnistrian land (next to, guess what, the Ukrainian border). The breakaway region also relies on Russian gas.
What now? Transnistrian authorities said this week that several explosions had knocked down two of its Soviet-era transmitting antennae and had hit its ministry of state security. Another attack happened against its military unit. The separatists have blamed Ukraine and have ordered general mobilisation of its forces.
Kyiv has denied having any connection with these attacks. But Ukrainian officials have also warned that Russia could stage a “false flag” attack in Transnistria to take military action from there.
With a large number of Russian soldiers already stationed in Transnistria, Moldova and the West is concerned that Moscow could use the region to launch an assault on western Ukraine while the Ukrainian military is concentrating its forces in the east to push back the Russians.
Obviously, this is a major cause of concern for the Moldovan government as it risks getting dragged into the conflict. After all, a Russian-controlled Transnistria — a region Moldova claims as its own — is a very different problem to having a Transnistrian authority that has Russian backing.
And, these aren’t assumptions. Last week, a senior Russian military official explained that the second phase of Russia’s “operation” includes a plan to capture southern Ukraine and improve its access to Transnistria. Russia does have control of some Ukrainian territory north of the Crimean Peninsula. But to create a land corridor between eastern Ukraine and Transnistria, the Russian military would have to take control of large southern Ukrainian cities like Mykolaiv and Odesa. These cities are still under Ukrainian control.
Pin it on the map
Time for some head scratching: This satellite image shows the highest national capital in the world by elevation. It’s believed to have been founded in 1548 by the Spanish conquistador, though there were some settlements there earlier. What city is this?
The answer is at the bottom.
What else?
Sigh of relief in Brussels, not in Paris
Emmanuel Macron has become the first French president since Jacques Chirac to get re-elected. Macron won 58.5 percent votes in the second and final round of polling on April 24. His far-right opponent Marine Le Pen bagged 41.5 percent of the votes. The contest wasn’t as close as some had projected. The result came as a sigh of relief for the European Union. European leaders had been alarmed by the prospect of Le Pen, a Eurosceptic, getting elected. Le Pen’s foreign policy would have dented the cohesiveness of European response to the new security challenge emerging from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But the result also paints an interesting picture for France. It’s worth noting that Le Pen’s vote tally was about eight percentage points more than in 2017. That tells us something. The result is a confirmation that the French far-right is here to stay. Le Pen has vowed to fight on. And the candidate with the highest number of votes (who didn’t make it to the final round) after Macron and Le Pen was far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Mélenchon’s vote tally (in the first round) was less than two percentage points below Le Pen. Macron and centrists may have gotten five more years, but the movement’s future is unclear. Therefore, it looks like French politics is set for a severe left-right divide. So, what will happen in 2027? Or, for that matter, what will happen in June when the French will vote in the parliamentary elections and Macron isn’t on the ballot?
Pakistan’s new foreign minister
Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the 33-year-old son of former president Asif Ali Zardari and assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was sworn-in as Pakistan’s foreign minister on April 28. He is the chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and now represents the political party in new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s 41-member Cabinet.
Bilawal has his work cut out: he will have to repair Pakistan’s relationship with the West, particularly the US, while strengthening ties with China — what Islamabad calls its all-weather friend. Pakistan and India have also not had any meaningful dialogue at the highest level in years (though some argue that it’s unlikely that relations between the two South Asian neighbours will see improvement in the near future).
Hina Rabbani Khar, who served as Pakistan’s foreign minister between 2011 and 2013 in the previous PPP, was inducted into the Cabinet as the junior minister for foreign affairs last week.
His grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had also become the foreign minister at the young age of 35 (and subsequently became the prime minister and president).
Austin, Blinken and Guterres visit Kyiv
United States Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres separately visited the Ukrainian capital Kyiv this week. The visits came at a time when the focus of the Russian assault shifted away from the western parts of Ukraine and the capital to the eastern and southern regions. Yet, blasts did hit Kyiv when the UN chief was visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Austin told reporters at a news conference elsewhere that the US wants to see “Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”. The US defence secretary said that Ukraine could defeat Russia if the former receives adequate support.
Besides a fresh allocation of $713 million as military aid to Ukraine and other European nations, US President Joe Biden requested the Congress (American parliament) for $33 billion in fresh support for Kyiv. About $20 billion of that would be for weapons.
UNSC reforms
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus this week which would force all five permanent members of the Security Council to justify using their veto power. The five permanent UNSC members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US — can ‘veto’, or block, any decision of the UN’s top body.
The veto power held by these five permanent members, or P5, is controversial. Usage of the veto has often led to paralysis in decision-making. It effectively also means that no adverse resolution can be passed against those five countries as they would veto it. For example, Russia vetoed a resolution condemning its invasion of Ukraine recently — even though the global consensus, as reflected in the non-binding UN General Assembly vote, showed wide criticism of Moscow.
According to the new measure, the UN General Assembly would be convened within 10 working days of such a veto being used “to hold a debate on the situation as to which the veto was cast”. While the assembly is not required to take any action, the UNSC P5 member(s) that used the vote would be exposed to wider international criticism.
The proposal brought in by Liechtenstein was co-sponsored by 100 states. Surprisingly, France, the UK and the US also supported it. It may be a step in the right direction. But critics claim that it would divide the UN further and also highlight that not much has been done to revoke the veto power altogether.
Aung San Suu Kyi convicted in military-ruled Myanmar
A court in Myanmar has convicted the country’s former state counsellor (equivalent to a prime minister) Aung San Suu Kyi of corruption and sentenced her to five years in prison. Myanmar has been under military-rule since the coup d’etat in early 2021. Suu Kyi was ousted in the coup and has been under detention since. She has denied the allegation and her supporters and human rights groups say the case — just like 10 other corruption charges — against her are politically motivated. In December 2021, she was sentenced to two years in jail on charges of inciting and breaking COVID-19 protocols. The army, Suu Kyi’s supporters claim, doesn’t want her to return to politics.
Interesting stuff
“A failure to appreciate the enduring appeal of nationalism helps us understand why so many observers underestimated the risk of Brexit or the unexpected emergence of hard-line nationalist parties.” Stephen Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, has argued in Foreign Policy that the failure to appreciate the nationalism phenomenon has led many countries and their leaders into trouble. Read the piece here.
Ukraine’s “IT Army” is staging cyberattacks against Russia at an unprecedented scale. Read more here.
“Succession is sometimes said to be the Achilles’ heel of autocracies, especially personalist ones.” Author Brian Taylor has written in Foreign Affairs about Russia’s inevitable succession crisis. Read the full story here.
‘Pin it on the map’ answer: La Paz, Bolivia. This capital city is situated at an altitude of 3,640 metres.
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