Russia Warns Moldova Against “Georgian Mistake”
August 25th, 2008Via: Reuters:
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned ex-Soviet Moldova on Monday against repeating Georgia’s mistake of trying to use force to seize back control of a breakaway region.
Russia sent peacekeepers to Moldova in the early 1990s to end a conflict between Chisinau and its breakaway Transdniestria region and is trying to mediate a deal between the two sides.
Transdniestria, one of a number of “frozen conflicts” on the territory of the former Soviet Union, mirrored the standoff between Georgia and its rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia until they erupted in war earlier this month.
Russia sent troops to Georgia to crush Tbilisi’s military push into South Ossetia and Moscow says Georgia has now lost the chance of ever re-integrating the breakaway provinces.
“After the Georgian leadership lost their marbles, as they say, all the problems got worse and a military conflict erupted,” Medvedev told Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin.
“This is a serious warning, a warning to all,” he added. “And I believe we should handle other existing conflicts in this context.”
As the two leaders spoke in Medvedev’s Black Sea residence in Sochi, Russian lawmakers were voting non-binding resolutions urging the Kremlin to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
That would be a nightmare scenario for Moldova which fears Russia could recognize Transdniestria, a pro-Moscow region in Moldova.
