As the anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine approaches, Monday’s visit to Kyiv by the US president, Joe Biden – during which he pledged further military support and a new wave of sanctions on Russia – powerfully testified to US solidarity. Mr Biden’s surprise trip, his first since the war began, was as important for its timing and symbolism as its substance. Indirectly, it will also have offered some reassurance a few hundred miles to the south, in the Moldovan capital, Chișinău.
Amid ominous signals that a hybrid campaign against Ukraine’s strategically crucial neighbour is being stepped up, and suggestions that plans for a Kremlin‑backed coup are in place, Moldova is also in need of western assistance. Earlier this month, its pro-European government resigned, having been relentlessly destabilised through crises largely made in Moscow. A new prime minister has been swiftly appointed. But at the Munich security conference, where the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, Mr Blinken became the most senior western official to voice concern over a potential plot to install a Moscow-friendly regime.
