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The authorities of Moldova have been ready to sabotage the runway of Chisinau International Airport since the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The plan, meant to curb a potential invasion of Moldova by Russia, was revealed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nicu Popescu to the local channel Jurnal TV. -snip- Among the feared scenario, Moldova’s government worried that Chisinau International Airport could be taken over by Russian forces and used as a bridgehead to launch an invasion of both Moldova and Ukraine. A similar tactic was attempted during Russia’s initial offensive on Ukraine, with...

The recently appointed Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean said Russia is considering taking control of Chisinau Airport to open a new front in Ukraine, confirming a claim by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On February 20, 2022, Zelenskyy told the German media Die Welt that the Ukrainian special services have intelligence about Moscow’s plans to seize Chisinau Airport (KIV), in Moldova’s capital city, to use as a bridgehead before opening a new front in western Ukraine. “Ukraine will always be ready to help Moldova,” Zelenskyy said. Such a plan is reminiscent of Russia’s initial offensive on Ukraine. On February 24, 2022,...

At a synagogue.. Israeli social worker.. had a flash of historic vertigo.. ancestors had lived in Chisinau more than a century ago, surviving a devastating pogrom in 1903 before emigrating to what became Israel. Now their descendant had returned .. this time not as a victim, but as a rescuer. “It’s like a closure for me,” .. from Jerusalem who had come to help evacuate thousands of Jewish refugees from Ukraine to Israel. “At the time, it was almost a shame to be Jewish.. Now people want to show they are Jewish so they can be evacuated.” Today.. the context...

Moldova officially applied for fast-track EU membership on Thursday (3 March), joining Ukraine and Georgia, its partners from the so-called Associated Trio, a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. Prompted by war in neighbouring Ukraine, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, the prime minister and the parliamentary speaker signed a formal application for her country to join the EU on Thursday. “It took 30 years for Moldova to reach maturity, but today the country is ready to take responsibility for its own future,” said Sandu, before holding up the signed document to the television cameras. “We want to live in peace,...

At the starting line, I stamped my feet in the snow and repeated this mantra: ‘There’ll be hot wine at the end.’ The promise of plentiful wine, local color, and a unique experience had drawn me to travel on a bitingly cold, gray January weekend to Moldova, one of the least-visited countries in Europe. I was running the Mileștii Mici Wine Run, a 10k race through the world's largest wine cellar. With a total 125 miles of underground passages, there’s plenty of room to stage an ultra here; the 10K Wine Run explores a mere fraction of the tunnels. Conditions...

CHISINAU – Over the pulsating beat at an exclusive nightclub, the arms smuggler made his pitch to a client: €2.5 million for enough radioactive cesium to contaminate several city blocks. It was earlier this year, and the two men were plotting their deal at an unlikely spot: the terrace of Cocos Prive, a dance club and sushi bar in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. “You can make a dirty bomb, which would be perfect for the Islamic State,” the smuggler said. “If you have a connection with them, the business will go smoothly.” But the smuggler, Valentin Grossu, was not...

Twenty years ago, on July 21, 1992, the Russian 14th Army’s intervention in the Transnistria conflict forced Moldova to accept the deployment of Russian “peacekeeping” units. Six days later (July 28), the first of those units was air-lifted from Russia’s interior to Moldova, on both banks of the Nistru (Dniester) river. Twenty years later, Russian troops both with and without a “peacekeeping” title are still keeping, not the peace in Moldova (Chisinau’s pitiful military is weaker than Tiraspol’s), but keeping the territory for Russia. Russian "peacekeepers" in Moldova Russia’s “peacekeeping” scenarios in Moldova/Transnistria in 1992 and in Georgia/South Ossetia in...

NOTE The following text SNIPPET is a quote: International Hacker Arraigned After Extradition Elaborate Scheme Stole over $9.4 Million from Credit Card Processor ATLANTA, GA—SERGEI TŠURIKOV, 26, of Tallinn, Estonia, has been extradited to the United States. TŠURIKOV appeared today and was arraigned before United States Magistrate Judge E. Clayton Scofield III, on federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer fraud, computer fraud, and aggravated identity theft. TŠURIKOV was indicted by a federal grand jury on these charges on November 10, 2010, along with VIKTOR PLESHCHUK, 29, of St. Petersburg, Russia; OLEG COVELIN,...

Moldova termed as illegal a referendum in the Trans-Dniester region whose results showed a majority of the people there supported the region's eventual union with Russia, reports from the Moldovan capital Chisinau said on Sunday. Moldova's presidential office said Moldova would not accept the results of the "illegitimate" referendum, which was held earlier Sunday. According to Russia's Itar-Tass news agency, by 17:00 local time, preliminary results had shown that over 90 percent of the voters favored leaving Moldova and joining Russia. Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev told Romania's press that he expected the Russian government would not accept the results...

The official Chisinau is in possession of documents indicating that weapons from Transnistria were supplied to Iraq, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin stated to Russian journalists who are paying a 5-day-long working visit to this republic on the Moldovan leadership's invitation. "We have sent to Russia a file with documents on the directions of arms exports from Transnistria. According to the data available with us, 13 Transnistrian industrial enterprises manufacture armaments continuously. We have a document from the Presidential Office of Saddam Hussein's certifying that weapons from Transnistria used to be imported to Iraq. Now we are scrutinizing this", Voronin...

CHISINAU. Oct 27 (Interfax) - Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev thinks that armaments from Russian stockpiles in Transdniestria might have been shipped to Chechen militants and, probably, Beslan. "Unfortunately, as far as we know, some armaments from the Russian depots in Transdniestria have been sent to Chechnya and some allegedly went to militants in Beslan," he told the Russian press in Chisinau on Thursday. "We must finally eliminate this source of arms for separatists and terrorists," he said.

<p>December 9, 2003 -- CHISINAU, Moldova - Dozens of rockets outfitted with so-called "dirty bombs" are missing in a breakaway region of the former Soviet republic of Moldova, an expert said yesterday.</p> <p>Oazu Nantoi, a political analyst at the nongovernmental Institute for Policy Studies in Chisinau, said he had seen photocopies of Russian military documents that revealed at least 38 dirty-bomb warheads had disappeared from a storage depot near the Trans-Dniester Tiraspol military airport.</p>

TIRASPOL, Moldova -- In the ethnic conflicts that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters in several countries seized upon an unlikely new weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan. Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan was transformed into a terror weapon, packed with explosives and lobbed into cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb. The warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.