Free Republic

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...

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...

<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.