On June 22 the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution A/72/L.58 entitled “Complete and unconditional withdrawal of foreign military forces from the territory of the Republic of Moldova”. In former times the OSCE framework was the main platform for discussing the issue of Russian Istanbul commitments of 1999. But now the issue appeared on the UN agenda what drastically upgraded its status and is particularly challenging for Russia which treats the UN as the cornerstone of the international security system.
The resolution was obviously promoted by the European Union, US and its allies. Why did it happen now and, for instance, not some years earlier when Moldova also tried to put this issue on the international agenda?
The EU and US could not ignore several negative effects of adopting such documents referring to 1999 Istanbul commitments. Firstly, in current political situation within Moldova itself the resolution is used by the government as an instrument to present itself as a defender of national interests against the backdrop of growing authoritarian tendencies in the country. The resolution was being prepared in the first half of June when the relations between Moldova and the West on such issues as democracy and rule of law were strained but not in crisis. Nevertheless, the adoption of the resolution coincided with the story of unvalidated mandate of newly elected mayor of Chisinau A. Nastase, which was explicitly criticized by the EU and US. Mr. Plahotniuc argued in his post on Facebook that the adopted resolution is a historic success for Moldova achieved by its government, parliament and diplomats, and that it is one more proof against any statements about alleged pro-Russian stance of the Moldovan authorities. That’s why we can conclude that the resolution (and indirectly the West) helps the Moldovan ruling elites to resolve many internal problems at this specific moment by re-politicizing the issue of Russian military presence.
Secondly, the adoption of the resolution sustains the agenda which is promoted by right-wing politicians in Moldova and sometimes the Democratic Party and which is overconcentrated on Russian military and political presence in the region as allegedly the key reason for the Transnistrian problem. In this sense it was telling that in his speech at the UN General Assembly meeting on June 22 the Moldovan foreign minister Tudor Ulianovschi rejected to treat the Joint Control Commission’s military component as a peacekeeping force, called it obsolete and referred to the old idea to replace it with multinational civilian force. The adopted resolution will not have any practical consequences but politically it will further promote the idea that the conflict should be solved not via political compromise but only through undermining Transnistrian de-facto statehood and Russian military and political presence in the region.
At the same time, it could hardly be argued that by adopting the resolution A/72/L.58 the EU and US would like to support politically the Democratic Party or return to the idea to replace the Russian peacekeepers with their own police force. The main reason seems to have to do not with Moldovan-Transnistrian context itself but rather with a general atmosphere in Russian-Western relations. One of the burning issues is the semi-military confrontation which is now taking place between Russia and NATO in Eastern Europe. Both sides increase their military potential along common borders, organize massive military exercises. The same is happening in Russian-Ukrainian relations. The point is that Operational Group of Russian Forces, which does not have an offensive potential or heavy weapons, is also engaged into these maneuvers, even if it can deliver only symbolic containment of any foreign military actions. About the last maneuver of military machinery was reported just couple of weeks ago. Probably this is exactly the reason why this time the key Western powers supported Moldova in putting forward this resolution. For them military containment has become an important basis for their foreign policy actions toward Russia.
Surely, the proliferation of conflict practices in Russian-Western relations in general also plays a substantial role. Russia and the West as well as Ukraine cannot reach an agreement on UN peacekeeping mission in Ukraine; Skripal case and other issues also ruined the remnants of mutual trust. That’s why there are now much less functional mitigating mechanisms to keep the conflict dynamics within former bounds. Consequently, the resolution will be for the West just one more small pressure point in bilateral information warfare.