A series of mysterious explosions in Moldova have raised the threat of Russia’s war in Ukraine spilling over into new territory, with unpredictable consequences.
The blasts destroyed radio antennas in a Russian-garrisoned sliver of eastern Moldova along the Ukrainian border, Transnistria, which had been peaceful since a brief conflict in 1992 waged by Kremlin-backed separatists against the Moldovan army.
The separatist authorities blamed the incidents on Ukrainian infiltrators while the Kyiv government alleged they were false-flag attacks designed to provide a pretext for an infusion of Russian troops, to add to the 1,500 already based there, just as similar blasts in the Donbas preceded the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Those allegations were given greater weight when residents in Transnistria received fake SMS texts on Tuesday warning of an imminent Ukrainian attack. The Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, convened an emergency meeting of her security council and declared that forces were at play in Transnistria which were “interested in destabilising the region”.
A Russian move into Transnistria would pose an imminent threat to the sovereignty of Moldova, a country of 2.6 million people which, like Ukraine, has shown increasing interest in joining Nato.
It would also menace Odesa, the Ukrainian port city which lies on the Black Sea coast between Moldova and Russian-occupied Kherson.
Four days ago the commander of Russia’s central military district, Rustam Minnekayev, said Moscow’s goals involved the seizure of southern Ukraine, so as to give Russia control over the Black Sea coast and access to Transnistria.
On Tuesday, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s security council and one of Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers, raised another grim specter, declaring that Ukraine could fragment into “several states”, blaming such an outcome on western intervention.
The threat of dismemberment follows the humiliating failure of Putin’s primary war aim, to subjugate all of Ukraine and install a friendly government in Kyiv. The massive offensive launched in February was unable to break Ukrainian resistance while Moscow was unable to deter Nato support.
Repeated Russian warnings, explicitly brandishing the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal, have had a diminishing impact. Finland and Sweden look set to declare their readiness to join Nato next month in time for the alliance summit at the end of June, shrugging off suggestions from Moscow that such a move would lead to the westward deployment of Russian forces, including nuclear missiles.
On Monday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, tried amplifying the threat, accusing Nato of fighting a proxy war in Ukraine and warning that the danger of nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated.” But barely 12 hours later, Germany dropped its earlier escalatory reservations about supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine, and announced that it would be sending 50 Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.
That announcement, by the defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, was made at Tuesday’s meeting of approximately 40 countries at Ramstein airbase, to coordinate and enhance western military support for Kyiv that marked a raising of the stakes by Ukraine’s backers. Announcing the UK’s own contribution of anti-aircraft systems, defence minister James Heappey went further, saying it would be “entirely legitimate” for the weapons to be used against supply lines inside Russia.
In response Russia has started bombing the supply lines bringing in western arms, targeting railways and bridges and threatening to hit Kyiv.
As the Ukraine war evolves, the parties to the conflict are redefining their aims. Russia has abandoned outright conquest for now, and is seeking to carve out a contiguous zone of occupation reaching as far as Transnistria, which Putin can package as “Novorossiya”, the foundation for a new Russian empire.
The Biden administration meanwhile has emphatically confirmed that its objectives go beyond the defence of Ukraine to the hobbling of Russia’s capacity to carry out further acts of aggression.
“What we want to see is a free and independent Ukraine and at the end of the day, that will involve a weakened Russia and strengthened Nato,” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, told CNN, echoing remarks made by the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, the day before.
“What’s at stake here is much greater than Ukraine,” Milley added. “If Russia gets away with this cost-free, so goes the so-called international world order and we enter an area of serious instability.”
With the start of this new phase in the war, a layer is being stripped away from the buffer that has thus far kept Nato and Russia from coming into direct, hostile contact, during the cold war and since. And if the ominous explosions in Transnistria are auguries of a new Putin gambit, Moldova could find itself to be the next proving ground where this dangerous new world makes itself felt.
