Moldova is trying to stay out of Russia’s war with Ukraine

MAIA SANDU, Moldova’s slight, soft-spoken, pro-European president, seems a bit out of place in her country’s vast presidential palace. Originally the home of Moldova’s Supreme Soviet, it was built in the waning days of the Soviet Union to advertise the government’s authority in the second smallest of its 15 constituent republics. When the union collapsed and Moldova became independent, Russia backed a separatist rebellion in Transnistria, a mostly Russian-speaking region; up to a thousand people were killed. Russian troops remain (illegally) in the breakaway statelet, over which the Moldovan government has no control. Now Russia’s attempt to re-establish the Soviet order in Ukraine is threatening to spark , already one of Europe’s poorest countries. This, says Ms Sandu in an interview with , is the most dangerous moment in Moldova’s history since its birth in 1991-92. The most obvious threat is military. Russia has threatened to extend the war to Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine. On April 22nd Rustam Minnekaev, a Russian general, declared that control over southern Ukraine would open up a route to Transnistria, where, he claimed, Russian-speakers were being oppressed. That set alarm bells ringing in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. “These were worrying words,” says Ms Sandu, “after we’ve seen what is happening in Ukraine.”