Once again, the similarities with the situation in Ukraine are depressingly similar. In November 2023, Putin gave a speech referring to the concept of the “Russian world (Russkiy Mir)”: loosely speaking, people living in the former USSR, people who feel a “spiritual connection” to the motherland, people who consider themselves native Russian speakers, and people who are carriers of Russian history and culture – regardless of national affiliation. In reality, this means anyone the Kremlin would ideally like to annex, not least Ukrainians.
This is the price of the West’s weakness: the war in Ukraine is not just about Russia and Ukraine
In 2014, before Russia sent in the tanks, they flooded eastern Ukraine with disinformation. I remember the memes and the tweets and posts on the contiguity of Russia and Ukraine, the perniciousness of the West (especially the EU and NATO) and the historical and cultural affinities and glories of Russkiy Mir. In this sense, even beyond Transnistria, Moldova is right in the Kremlin’s sights. And just like Crimea and the Donbas were never about just those regions, but the whole of Ukraine, this is also an operation directed against Moldova. It is the type of state that is in many ways guaranteed to give Putin a conniption: a former Soviet state that is also now a candidate for EU accession.
Moldova was granted status as candidate nation in June 2022 with the view to being a member nation by 2030. For the Kremlin, the prospect of Moldova joining the EU is almost as geopolitically and ideologically unacceptable as it was and is for Ukraine. What is happening now is merely the fruition of years (if not decades) of information and political subversion there (as across eastern Europe).
A few years ago, I traipsed across large parts of eastern Europe to assess the threat level of Russian information operations in the region — I wanted to know how the Russians were targeting the hearts and minds of the people there. As I sat in various dilapidated offices in Moldova listening to people delivering the various Russian narratives, it was clear that the Kremlin’s playbook was pretty rigid. It centred on a mythologising of Moldova’s soviet past: pointing to the supposedly elevated standards of living that both shared along with a glorious history. The inescapable fact, though, was Moldova’s weakness meant it couldn’t operate as a state without Russian help. Once more I could have been in Ukraine.
More narrowly, Russian disinformation narratives argued that the Moldovan government is a puppet of the EU and Nato and US. Europe is of course totally corrupt and a bastion of perversion in which corrupt officials are hankering to replace family values with LGBT rights. “What this means,” a fierce Moldovan journalist said to me, “is that they say if we join the EU our kids will be forced to become gay and it won’t be possible to beat your wife anymore.” I replied that this was surely couched in a more sophisticated language. “Barely,” she replied.
Like pretty much all former Soviet states, Moldova suffers from the twin curses of corruption and Kremlin influence. Politically, Moldovan politics remains vulnerable to its propaganda. In March 2022, just weeks after Russia’s all-out invasion, Ukraine banned its pro-Russia Regions Party, but in Moldova the pro-Russia Party of Socialists remains prominent in public life and has about a 20% share of the vote.
Source link : https://unherd.com/2024/03/is-putin-opening-a-second-front-in-europe/
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Publish date : 2024-03-06 03:00:00
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