Free Republic

Moldova’s parliament on Thursday (16 March) approved a law on referring to the national language as Romanian in all legislative texts and the constitution, despite opposition from a pro-Moscow communist party. The move is intended to resolve a heated dispute over whether the national language should be referred to as Romanian or Moldovan. The constitution currently refers to the national language as Moldovan, but Moldova’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union stipulated that Romanian is the official language. Moldova’s governing PAS party proposed the draft law to bring the constitution into line with a constitutional court ruling in...

Inflammatory language: Nina Shtanski, foreign minister of Transdniestria The glamorous foreign minister of a breakaway region of Moldova is calling on Vladimir Putin to make her country his next conquest in eastern Europe. Few may have heard of Transdniestria, the unofficial and fictitious-sounding statelet whose head of international relations is 36-year-old Nina Shtanski. However, senior Western figures are alarmed that following the annexation of Crimea it is step two in a Kremlin masterplan to redraw the frontiers of Europe. This top diplomat in staunchly pro-Russian Transdniestria, who has a penchant for revealing black dresses, is gushing in her praise of...

Citing the right to intervene wherever Russians are deemed to be in trouble, Vladimir Putin has set a possible precedent for future Russian intervention across Eastern Europe and Central Asia.This map, from Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, highlights the regions in neighboring countries that have the highest concentrations of Russian citizens, ethnic Russians, and native Russian speakers. www.rferl.org Kazakhstan and Belarus, both countries with large Russian populations, are already within Russia's sphere of influence. Both countries are members of the Eurasian Economic Community and have strong ties to Russia.Still, according to Wikistrat senior analyst Mark Galeotti, Russia could take advantage...

Moldova's breakaway region of Trans-Dniester has reacted to US plans for a missile defence shield by offering to host new Russian missiles. The US wants to base elements of its missile defence shield in neighbouring Romania and Bulgaria - much to Russia's concern. Trans-Dniester leader Igor Smirnov said Russia had not yet asked it to be a host but any request would be approved. Trans-Dniester is already home to Russian troops and an arms dump. The Trans-Dniester region declared independence from Moldova in 1991. Sharp criticism Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already asked for an explanation from the US...

BRUSSELS, October 25, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- At a European Parliament debate on South Ossetia and Transdniester today, EU officials had two distinct messages. First, that the bloc’s involvement in Moldova will remain strong. Second, that Georgia's requests for greater EU involvement are "unrealistic." From the EU’s point of view, not all frozen conflicts are alike. It continues to acknowledge Russia’s key role in attempts at resolution. But when it comes to its own involvement, Brussels is clearly more enthusiastic about Moldova than it is about Georgia. Moldova will share a border with the EU as of January 1, 2006, when...

October 6, 2006 -- Russia's lower house of parliament has passed a statement backing a recent referendum on independence for the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniester. The Duma statement said the referendum was legitimate and the international community should recognize its results. In the September 17 referendum, more than 97 percent of voters backed independence for Transdniester, with the ultimate goal of union with Russia. Both the United States and the EU have said they do not recognize its results.

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...

AP Voters in Moldova's breakaway Trans-Dniester cast ballots Sunday in a referendum that will determine whether this separatist region should continue pursuing its goal of joining Russia. The region's 390,000 registered voters were expected to overwhelmingly back the initiative, which is supported by all of its political parties. Moldova, which fought a war with the region's Russian-speaking separatists in 1992 that killed some 1,500 people, has said it will not recognize the results. The European Union and the United States are also spurning the plebiscite, which critics warn could set a precedent for pro-Russian separatists in other ex-Soviet republics. Trans-Dniester...

March 5, 2006 -- Ukraine has sparked a flurry of criticism after tightening border rules with Moldova as part of EU efforts to stamp out illegal smuggling, a top Ukrainian customs official said on March 5. Russia and the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniester, which is directly affected by the new rules, have accused Kyiv of trying to pressure Transdniester, said Oleksandr Yegorov. Moldova, meanwhile, complained that Kyiv has taken too long to enforce the new procedures. With growing pressure from Moldova and the European Union to restore order to the border area, Ukraine on March 3 imposed new rules...

Election Results Yesterday, the unrecognized Pridnestrovie Moldavia Republic (PMR) was electing deputies of Supreme Council. The Sunday voting went without participation of international observers. Official Moldavian authorities call the election another farce. However, it did not faze the leadership of Pridnestrovie. The regime of Igor Smirnov was able to prevent an “orange revolution” from happening and kept the power. It means Moscow should lay off the worries for the next five years – it will not be let out of Pridnestrovie. “Yes” The authorities made public transportation free for the day of the elections. From early morning speakers were transmitting...

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.

There are almost 200 official countries in the world but there are dozens more unrecognised nations determined to be independent. They have rulers, parliaments and armies, but they rarely feature on maps and receive few foreign visitors. The leaders of Trans-Dniester gather to watch Independence Day celebrations Trans-Dniester broke away from Moldovan control in 1990 The detention cells in the KGB secret police headquarters in Trans-Dniester - which lies between Moldova and Ukraine - are not the ideal place to spend a Saturday night. Perhaps I have seen too many Cold War thrillers, but after a BBC film crew and...

THREE radioactive rockets capable of contaminating a city centre were offered for sale last week to a Sunday Times reporter posing as a middleman for Islamic terrorists. The Alazan rockets, which have a range of eight miles, were among 50,000 tons of weapons left behind at an arms dump in the breakaway eastern European republic of Transdniester when the Russian army withdrew after the cold war. They were offered to the reporter for $500,000 (£263,000) after he approached a senior officer in Transdniester’s secret police, claiming to represent a militant group in Algeria. The officer contacted a local arms dealer...

May 4, 2005: Ukraine has proposed a "peace plan" to resolve Moldova's Transdniester problem. The Ukrainian proposal -- which is supported by the US-- is based on holding a democratic election in Transdniester. Ukraine says Russua, the US, the EU, and the OSCE would sponsor the elections. Russian forces in Transdniester would be withdrawn and be replaced by international observers. This is a good idea and Ukraine's recent experience gives it political credibility.

MOSCOW - Russia has removed all Soviet-built anti-aircraft missiles from its vast arms depots in a Moldova province to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists, officials said Monday. The missiles were flown from Trans-Dniester Province to the Moscow on Saturday, the Defense Ministry said in a statement released Monday. A spokesman for the ministry, who asked not be named, wouldn't say how many weapons were evacuated, but he said that no anti-aircraft missiles are left in Trans-Dniester. The Defense Ministry said in the statement that it had decided to remove the weapons to "minimize the potential danger...

<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.