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AFP: Senator: Washington must pressure Russia on Moldova(AFP)
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2 days ago
WASHINGTON — The United States should step up efforts to assist the pro-Western government in Moldova by pressuring Russia to resolve a separatist movement in the former Soviet state, according to a Senate report released Monday.
Senator Richard Lugar, the highest-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee of the Democratic-controlled Senate, tasked his staff to research and write the report.
It recommends that President Barack Obama's administration build on French and German efforts to prioritize Transdniestr, a narrow strip of land controlled by Russian-backed separatists since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"Decades of experience suggest that US leadership on issues of European security remains indispensable," the report states.
Lugar's report calls for "high-level diplomatic attention" to persuade Russia that "its assistance in brokering a settlement in Transdniestr, and other conflict regions in Eurasia, would serve as an illustration that developments in NATO-Russia relations can tangibly advance Eastern European security."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel last year raised Transdniestr security questions with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.
"The United States should strongly support European efforts to resolve the conflict and thereby assist Moldova in advancing its Euro-Atlantic aspirations," Lugar wrote in the introduction.
"A resolute US commitment to this cause will ensure that we do not cede influence in a region of paramount importance to US foreign policy," Lugan added.
The report said Russia has failed to fulfill its 1999 pledge to remove its military equipment from Transdniestr, where polls show that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is the most popular politician among the half-million inhabitants.
Several hundred Russian troops remain there and serve with Moldovan and Transdniestrian troops as peacekeepers.
Transdniestr has remained peaceful since the end of a war between separatists and Moldova in 1992, but the region is a hotbed of criminal activity including trafficking of people and weapons.
Moldova's government is "saddled by the unresolved status of Transdniestr," the report said.
Europe's poorest country, Moldova remains mired in a political crisis after elections last November failed to overcome a stalemate in parliament between pro-Western liberals and the pro-Moscow Communists.
In January, Moldova's parliament approved the composition of a new government. Of the 19-member cabinet comprised of members of the country's ruling coalition of pro-European parties, 13 kept their posts, including Prime Minister Vlad Filat.
The United States is providing $262 million in development aid to Moldova, in a compact that requires democratic reforms. The US also provides military training to Moldovan officers.
EUobserver / Migrants battle to get into fortress EUEUOBSERVER / CHISINAU - With Moldova inching toward EU visa-free travel while increasingly becoming a transit point for EU-bound irregular migrants, Moldovan officials have listed some of the ways people use to enter fortress Europe.
Option one: buy a real visa. The Rolls Royce way to get into the EU illegally is to bribe an EU consular official in Moldova into issuing a real visa.
Veaceslav Cirlig, the head of the migration policy department in Moldova's interior ministry, told this website that the size of the bribe is up to €5,000. If you pull it off, it is a watertight way of getting into the EU's passport-free Schengen zone, where people can outstay the duration of the visa and disappear into society.
EU consular officials are quite hard to corrupt. But in some cases, as with the Netherlands, EU countries keep an embassy in neighbouring Ukraine and hire Ukrainians or Moldovans to issue visas in Moldova. The foreign staff are said to be more amenable to bribe-taking.
Option two: buy a forged Polish or Romanian passport or visa. The cost here is between €300 and €800, but the risk is greater. Roman Revenco, the director of Moldova's Border Guards Service, said he has up-to-date document scanners that "easily" detect fakes. Guards on Monday (24 January) caught a Moldovan citizen with a fake Polish visa bought for €800.
Option three: hide on a train or in a truck. Moldova is angling for EU money to buy 12 modern vehicle scanners costing €300,000 each but does not have them yet. Mr Revenco said guards "recently" found nine Turks, including two children aged 12 and 14, concealed in a truck. The migrants had been "facilitated" by German citizens. He however added that such cases are "rare."
Option four: get on a boat or swim. The physical border between Moldova and EU member Romania is the river Prut. Mr Revenco said people try both ways to get over the water, but noted that the river is "dangerous" because of its strong current.
Option five: walk. Some migrants come to Moldova and then go to Ukraine, which has a long land border with EU member Poland. This option is also dangerous. In 2007 three girls aged six, 10 and 13 died in the Bieszczady mountains while trying to walk into Poland with their mother. If caught, migrants face harsh conditions in Ukrainian detention camps.
Last October, Moldova restarted a daily train service between Chisinau and Odessa in Ukraine. The train stops in Tiraspol, the main city in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, an unrecognised entity which broke away from Moldova 20 years ago and is ruled by a Russian factory manager.
Tiraspol is a threat to EU border security. It has facilities for producing illegal documents and is home to a massive Soviet-era arms cache, but the 350,000 people who live there go in and out of Moldova proper with no checks by Moldovan border guards. Evidence indicates that its main smuggling activity is counterfeit cigarettes, however.
Most irregular migrants in Moldova come from former Soviet Union territories. People from Africa, Asia and the Middle East instead try to use the Greek-Turkish land border, which is considerably busier.
Meanwhile, Moldovans are returning home from the EU due to the economic crisis in the Union. And people from the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic are going to Turkey to try to make a living.
The EU commissioner responsible for visas, Sweden's Cecilia Malmstrom, in Chisinau on Monday at a conference on EU migration gave Moldova an Action Plan on what it must do to clinch the visa-free deal.
She declined to give a target date and told Moldovan media that people should not abuse future freedoms. "Visa liberalisation is not something that will get jobs in Europe. It's about visiting, getting to know each other, making contact," she said.
Brussels nannies
Oxford University migration expert Franck Duvell told the 19 EU delegations at the conference that people who enter the union on a fully legal visa but outstay their exit date and work in menial jobs such as cleaning far outnumber people who enter illegally. "If such people were regularised in some way, a good proportion of 'illegal migration' would be eradicated," he said.
On the subject of household workers in the EU capital, Ms Malmstrom admitted it is common knowledge that many EU officials hire irregular migrants as cleaners and nannies. "If it's against Belgian law, it's illegal and they shouldn't do it," she said. "As to whether they are being exploited, I'm sure some of them are treated very well. But if it's against the law, they shouldn't do it."
For his part, Martijn Pluim from the International Centre for Migration Policy Development in Vienna, told this website he knows of cases in which European diplomats have abused their household staff.
moldovan surveillance16 hours of protests captured in 300 clips recorded by 13 different
surveillance cameras, documenting the entire so-called “Twitter
Revolution” in Moldova.
Here are the uncut 16 hours of a revolution. This is the CCTV footage from 7th of April and the night that followed, recorded by government surveillance cameras located on the buildings of the Government, the Parliament and the Presidency in downtown Chisinau. These are the relevant hours captured in 300 clips recorded by 13 surveillance cameras starting on April the 7 at 10 am and ending at 2 am next morning. Moldovan authorities never released these videos.
William Schreiber on Moldova's Upcoming Election - NewsweekNext Sunday, Europe’s poorest country will head to the polls for its third election in two years. If the West has learned from its mistakes promoting democracy in formerly Soviet countries like Georgia and Ukraine, the parliamentary elections in Moldova could be Europe’s biggest chance to expand its values eastward. If not, the elections could trigger an ersatz popular revolution, thanks to an impatient young generation, eager for the economic benefits of EU membership.
This is a country where the Communist Party could prove democracy’s greatest hope—and pro-Western youth its greatest threat. In April 2009, mobs of young protesters stormed the Parliament building, chanting anticommunist slogans and waving EU flags. They could do it again this Sunday if things don’t go their way.
These protesters may be looking to Europe, but don’t call them democrats. The elections they rioted against were declared free and fair by international observers. Unlike the color revolutions, which swept the former Soviet Union in response to blatant fraud, there is no evidence of rigged elections to justify revolution in Moldova. Turns out, the Communist Party of Moldova doesn’t need to fix results: communists go to the polls. Years of required participation taught them voter discipline. Turnout in regular elections typically exceeds 60 percent, much to the frustration of some younger voters. Dana Condrea, a recent college grad, says young Moldovans want to see European standards of living. “We’re sick and tired of communism,” she says. “At our university, you can barely find anyone who sympathizes with them.” When the communists won some 50 percent of the April vote, word spread, and students took to the streets.
Moldovan youth apparently don’t remember that the loss of a fair election is not an occasion for revolution. But their basic complaints—about the failure of the regime to bring economic growth—are legitimate. To be sure, countries without democratic values can never be European. But experts say the West should accommodate their thirst for change by pressuring the country’s strongest politicians to become better state builders. “This isn’t 1989 in Moldova,” says Damon Wilson, vice president of the Atlantic Council. “But I would say there is a real opportunity for an increasingly democratic and pluralistic system to take hold.”
The West should offer mentorship in good governance to whoever wins Sunday’s election, Wilson argues. It’s a lesson learned the hard way in Ukraine, where the Orange Revolution’s inability to follow through led to widespread disgust and apathy. “When you have the opportunity to govern in a country like Moldova, you need to deliver,” he says. “You need to demonstrate the benefits of democratic elections. The reality is, the day after elections, whoever is running the show has a very hard slog before them.”
Moldova’s liberal forces, now in power, have perhaps the hardest slog. Supporters are split between two major leaders: Vlad Filat, the prime minister, and Mihai Ghimpu, the country’s acting president. Each has trouble putting rivalry aside. Their feuding has been an asset to the communists in the past. It could become an additional liability for establishing democratic legitimacy through governance.
That leaves an unlikely champion for Western values: Vladimir Voronin, Europe’s first electable communist since the fall of the U.S.S.R. Voronin and his party held the Moldovan presidency for eight years straight until they lost in late 2009. While maintaining the Kremlin’s favor, Voronin proved himself to the West by saying yes to trade and a firm no to Russian-backed separatists. In fact, the blessings of Moscow should be another plus for Europeans. Georgia became unstable thanks to Russia’s perception of Mikheil Saakashvili as a satellite threat. Germans thought twice about supporting Ukrainian independence after Viktor Yushchenko’s friction with Moscow shut off Ukraine’s gas-transit pipelines.
Still, even Wilson admits it may be hard to persuade skeptical U.S. congressmen to go to bat for a party that embraces communism—hammer, sickle, and all. But he remains optimistic about Voronin’s role. Wilson believes that with coaching from center-left European socialists, the Moldovan communists could evolve into garden-type social democrats. No matter who comes to power Sunday, Moldova may not soon resemble a worker’s paradise. But with the right kind of help from its neighbors, it may start looking more European.
Schreiber is a Boren National Security Scholar based in Warsaw.
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Sharing | LinkedInDuring recent business trips to Chisinau, Moldova, I have had the pleasure of working in a country with excellent, if not superior, Internet access within hotels, parks, Internet cafes, and really any other location within the capital city you would like to “jack in” to the Internet.
As I watch my Slingbox connecting to Channel 2 Evening News in Los Angeles, I am enjoying anywhere between 500Kbps and 900Kbps throughput, more than adequate to keep homesickness under control and keep up to date on the community.
CH2-cap2 Moldova has several Internet Service Providers available for public access, including StarNet, Orange Moldova, MoldTelecom, and lots of resellers of other company Internet capacity.
The cost of accessing high performance Internet is a fraction of what you would expect to pay in the United States or other “developed” countries, and the performance is among the best I have experiences traveling in at least 15 countries during the past year.
Starnet and Orange take advantage of new terrestrial fiber optic capacity connecting Moldova through Romania, and then directly interconnecting with the global Internet community at Europe’s major Internet Exchange Points, including the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), the Frankfurt Exchange (DE-CIX), and London’s LINX.
A traceroute (following the path an Internet packet takes from my computer to my webhost in California) shows excellent routing outside of Moldova:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\John R Savageau>tracert www.pacific-tier.com
Tracing route to sbs-p4p.asbs.yahoodns.net [216.39.62.190]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 10 ms 2 ms itns.md [93.113.118.1]
2 5 ms 3 ms 3 ms 10.11.16.254
3 7 ms 6 ms 14 ms ex-starnet.starnet.md [89.28.1.177]
4 8 ms 5 ms 10 ms 95-65-3-161.starnet.md [95.65.3.161]
5 68 ms 49 ms 49 ms ge-1-3-0.pat2.dee.yahoo.com [80.81.193.115]
6 135 ms 137 ms 136 ms as-1.pat2.dcp.yahoo.com [66.196.65.129]
7 135 ms 134 ms 205 ms ae-1-d171.msr2.re1.yahoo.com [216.115.108.31]
8 137 ms 137 ms 137 ms gi-1-45.bas-b2.re4.yahoo.com [216.39.57.5]
9 136 ms 139 ms 136 ms p4p2.geo.re4.yahoo.com [216.39.62.190]
Trace complete.
Disposable Income Demands Additional Considerations
Market conditions in Moldova are different from the US and other economically developed countries. Those living below the poverty line in Moldova, according to the CIA World Factbook, is around 30% . Disposable income continues to be low, and a small percentage of the population owns or has access to private personal computers.
Thus the cost of Internet access, to develop market, is possibly artificially low. or the US Internet access providers are artificially high…
Cost of accessing prepaid wireless Internet per month through Liberty WiFi, a StarNet reseller:
Capture
NOTE: 1 US$ = ~12 Moldovan Lei
During a recent visit to Moldova I used Orange’s wireless Internet product, which was about 2 times the price of Liberty WiFi, but with equally impressive performance.
Internet Access is Essential for Moldova’s Development
As Moldova continues to struggle through the challenges of building a market economy, dealing with the issues of a newly democratized country, poor rural infrastructure (roads, telecom, power, etc), and socially coming to grips with their place in the European and Eastern communities, Moldova will need to quickly bring their citizens up to speed with technology and wired everything.
chisinau Cloud-based software, such as Microsoft Live Office, Google Docs, Yahoo Mail, and other hosted services will allow Moldovans access to Internet utilities without the high cost of software licensing, further allowing better use of shared resources in Internet cafes, schools, and other public locations. The government is aggressively pursuing modern eGovernment projects to help the citizens reduce the burden of bureaucracy on their lives , and children are exposed to technology throughout the education system.
With Moldova’s Internet Service Providers delivering some of the highest performance network access in the world, Modovans will further be relieved of the burden of constructing large and small data centers, taking advantage of cloud and SaaS service providers located within Europe and North America, returning precious funds to building business – rather than ICT server and services infrastructure.
Moldova Supports Private Enterprise
While there are some items that could use some adjustment, such as high tariffs for importing computer equipment, Moldova has at least supported both domestic and foreign telecom companies in developing both fixed line and wireless infrastructure. Orange (France Telecom), MoldCel Telecom (TeliaSonera), and Starnet continue to build fiber optic and wireless network infrastructure, with nearly 100% 3G coverage throughout the country.
The entire wireless system is 4G-ready, and deployment is planned within the next couple of years.
Impressive. Really.
Moldova: Russia's Next Target? | STRATFORMoldova: Russia's Next Target?
August 9, 2010 | 2151 GMT
Moldova: Russia's Next Target?
VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev (L) and acting Moldovan President Mihai Ghimpu in Chisinau on Oct. 9, 2009
Summary
The head of one of the parties in Moldova’s pro-European ruling coalition said Aug. 9 that the coalition “de facto no longer exists.” This is just the latest in a series of events indicating rifts within the ruling Moldovan coalition — rifts that Russia could use as a way to increase its influence in Chisinau.
Analysis
The leader of the Democratic Party — one of four parties in Moldova’s ruling Alliance for European Integration (AEI) — said Aug. 9 that the ruling coalition “de facto no longer exists.” Democratic Party chief Marian Lupu said that although the coalition officially has held together, he was “ashamed” to belong to the same coalition as Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat and acting President Mihai Ghimpu, and that he would stand as a candidate in the country’s upcoming presidential elections.
Lupu’s statements are only the latest sign of rifts within Moldova’s ruling coalition of pro-European parties. Russia sees these rifts as an opportunity to assess just how much effort — as well as risk — it is willing to take in increasing its influence in Chisinau at the pro-European elements’ expense.
According to STRATFOR sources in Moscow, Moldova could be the next former Soviet country where Russia will target pro-European political elements. This follows a key development in May, when Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and his newly elected pro-Russian counterpart in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, issued a joint declaration that their countries would work together to address the ongoing dispute over the breakaway province of Transdniestria. There are two ways that Russia — with Ukraine’s help — could address the Moldovan issue in the short term. One is to attempt to bring Transdniestria under control along with the rest of Moldova, and the other is to maintain hegemony over just Transdniestria and settle for a split country, without controlling Moldova proper.
Moldova: Russia's Next Target?
Circumstances in Moldova could make the country vulnerable to Russia’s designs. The government is weak and split among the AEI member parties and faces constant challenges from the pro-Russian Communists, who are now in the opposition. The pro-European Ghimpu has made some extremely controversial moves like issuing a decree to mark June 28 as “Soviet Occupation Day” (which has since been overturned by the country’s Constitutional Court). This not only angered Transdniestria and caused Russia to retaliate by targeting the country’s wine exports, but polarized the pragmatic pro-European elements within Moldova as well, as evidenced by Lupu’s recent statements. This has caused the pro-European bloc’s popularity to fall and the Communists to make a comeback in the polls, and sets the stage for a referendum scheduled for September that could see a new set of general elections, likely in November. The Communists could then retake power from the fragile AEI.
Russia is not the only outside power vying for influence in Moldova; another more traditional suitor is Romania, which has cultural and ethnic ties to the country. Romania, seeing the course of recent events in Ukraine, has been pursuing Moldova aggressively, thinking it could be the next former Soviet state to fall to Moscow. Romanian President Traian Basescu recently stated that the two Romanian-speaking territories should be reunited, and that, should Ukraine make a move for Transdniestria or Moldova, Romania would use the Romanian populations in western Ukraine — mainly Bucovina — to challenge Kiev. Ukraine and Russia have taken Basescu’s comments quite seriously. Basescu’s comments were also controversial within Moldova, where many citizens are against being split between Ukraine and Romania and instead want Moldova to remain its own independent country.
The Transdniestria issue is also a key topic that Germany specifically suggested Berlin and Moscow work on as they seek to strengthen their ties via the Russia-EU Security Council. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Transdniestria should be a priority for Russian-EU talks, and the issue was at the top of the agenda for Merkel’s meeting with Medvedev in June. Germany drafted a proposal for negotiations on the issue, but this included Russia removing its troops from Transdniestria — something Moscow has said it would not do. As Russia and Germany increase cooperation in the economic and energy sectors, the Transdniestria issue could slow this warming of relations. Russia expanding its influence in Ukraine is one thing, but Moldova may be a little too far into Europe for even Russia-friendly Germany to be comfortable with. Russia’s overtures in Moldova therefore could ripple across the rest of Europe, depending on how far Moscow decides to go to increase its influence in Chisinau.
