Russia to open gateway to Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria after Donbass

Russia has stoked panic in Europe’s Western-leaning former Soviet republic of Moldova after Deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, Rustam Minnekayev said on Friday that Russian troops are planning to open a gateway to [Transdniestria] Transnistria in the second phase of the military operation that began on April 19. The Deputy commander of the Russian military stated that his troops will construct a bridge between the Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula, the eastern flank of Ukraine and a narrow strip of land held by pro-Russian separatists in Moldova that runs within 40 km (25 miles) to the port of Odesa in Kyiv. 

After taking control of the whole of southern Ukraine and Donbass, Moscow will establish a land corridor to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, an internationally recognized Moldovan territory that has been under the control of Russia since its 1992 separation during the Transnistria War. Two months ago, Ukrainian officials accused Moscow of preparing an airfield to receive aircraft to transfer the Ukrainian prisoners of war [Ukraine soldiers] as well as mobilizing troops from the Transnistrian front, a claim Moldova’s defence ministry had rejected. 

While the breakaway territory of Transnistria has detached itself from Moldova over risks of a possible unification of the latter with Romania, Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 raised speculations that it would, one day, annexe the territory. After the war in Ukraine that began on February 24 2020, Ukraine warned that Russia's agenda is to establish new "republics" in occupied areas in the region.

Russia's Central Military District (CFD) command is now eyeing access via a dedicated route to Moldova's Transnistria region that connects occupied regions in Ukraine. 

Credit: Associated Press

As the Russian commander revealed his troops' strategy in the'second phase' of the military intervention, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry derided the act as “imperialism”. “They stopped hiding it,” the ministry said on Telegram. “Russia acknowledged that the goal of the ‘second phase’ of the war is not victory over the mythical Nazis, but simply the occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine. Imperialism as it is.”

Russia's deputy military commander Minnekaev also revealed that the first phase of the invasion was aimed at "weakening" the enemy troops' resolve and gauging the weaponry.   

“The media are now talking a lot about some failures of our armed forces. But this is not the case. In the first days … the tactics of Ukrainian units were designed to ensure that, having pulled ahead, individual groups of Russian troops fell into pre-prepared ambushes and suffered losses,” he said.

“But the Russian armed forces very quickly adapted to this and changed tactics.”

An armoured personnel carrier burns and damaged light utility vehicles that stand abandoned after fighting in Kharkiv. Credit: Associated Press

'We are now at war with the whole world..' 

Minnekayev, acting commander of the CFD, informed that Russia’s defensive battles in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donbass and to the South “is another way out to Transnistria.” Like Ukraine, he went on to claim that there is mounting evidence of "oppression" of the Russian-speaking population in the internationally recognized Moldovan territory. Moscow had used this rhetoric of “genocide” of the Russian minorities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine as grounds for the military operation.

As Russia has stationed over 1,300 troops, a pro-Russian regime has de facto ruled the breakaway republic of Transnistria since the 1990s. While like the Minsk agreement, a cease-fire was brokered in 1992, the breakaway territory is a hotbed of hostilities. 

Minnekayev told a defense industry meeting in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, "We are now at war with the whole world, as it was in the Great Patriotic War," referring to Russia's description of World War II.

"The whole world was against us and now it's the same thing, they never liked Russia," he added. 

Ukraine had warred that Russia may use the region to launch attacks on western Ukraine and other occupied regions in Europe. Russian troops would surround Ukrainian forces in the south, especially around the Odesa region that has close proximity to Transnistria. The mobilization of Russian troops into the Transnistrian separatist region on the left bank of the Dniester River can be speculated around the time of the siege of the city of Odesa in southern Ukraine as it lies just 60 kilometres from the Moldovan border town, Palanca. 

Moldova seeks EU membership

Moscow might invade Transnistria in Moldova next as for more than 30 years it has deployed around 1,500 to 2,000 soldiers on Moldovan land. And after Moldova’s split from the remnants of the USSR the cessation of hostilities has still not been witnessed despite Russia sending its so-called “peacekeepers.” Task Force of Russian Troops, or GOTR, which is stationed in Transnistria directly to the Western Military District of the Russian Army based in St. Petersburg. They “illegally” guard Soviet-like ammunition depot in Cobasna village near the border of Ukraine with 20,000 tonnes of weaponry and dangerous World War II-era Soviet explosives stored in the EU nation after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991.

Russian soldiers also keep launching missiles and artillery rounds from warships in the Black Sea on the village of Mirne near the border with Moldova, as per Ukrayinska Pravda. Moldovan Defence Ministry told the publication that he has to consider the possible scenario of a military operation involving the Russian troops attacking Odesa and the Russian forces stationed in Moldova. Russian troops’ goal is to make a corridor to the region that runs from inside the Russian occupied Ukrainian territories. Moldova has also submitted its first EU membership questionnaire today on April 22 exploring its options to defend its territorial sovereignty and taking examples from the war in Ukraine.