Moldova’s president has accused Russia of plotting a coup against her pro-Western government. Maia Sandu says prosecutors and spooks need more powers to combat the threat from the Kremlin
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that he had informed his Moldovan counterpart of a Russian plot to destroy her pro-Western government. One day later a Russian missile streaked across Moldovan airspace on its way to a target in Ukraine. That same day Natalia Gavrilita, Moldova’s prime minister, resigned. Yet the cause of her fall was not the threat from Russia but rather soaring inflation, which has left huge numbers of Moldovans struggling to pay their bills.
This year Moldova’s defence budget will leap by 68% compared with 2022. The sum is still tiny; approximately €75m , or 0.55% of, according to Anatolie Nosatii, the defence minister. He jokes that he cannot even afford to change the Soviet-era map of Europe that dominates his office. The country’s only tanks are museum pieces, and barely half of its 6,500 soldiers are professionals.
Most of Transnistria’s leaders are more interested in money than in Russia, he reckons, however hostile their rhetoric. In the past a lucrative chunk of that has come from smuggling in and out of Ukraine, but the war has now closed that border. The Russians “are no longer protection” for the locals, says Mr Flenchea; indeed, they are increasingly “a potential problem”.
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