Transnistria: ‘Freezing’ as the Lesser Evil

Vladimir SOCOR

Ambassadors from Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United States, and the European Union, collectively the mediators and observers to the Transnistria conflict-settlement negotiations, held talks in Chisinau and Tiraspol on July 12. This group seeks to promote the resumption of active negotiations after last month’s regime change in Moldova. The negotiations’ professed goals are a) “small steps” to upgrade Transnistria’s distinctive prerogatives, leading toward b) a “special status for Transnistria within Moldova” (Osce.org, July 12).

Moving through “small steps” toward a “special status” is inherently dangerous to Moldova, and is a matter of concern to neighboring Ukraine. Apart from the primordial Russian inspiration of the whole process (which should have invalidated this process from the outset), any acceleration of these negotiations could break apart Moldova’s coalition of Western-oriented and Russia-friendly parties that took office one month ago. Even Moldovan President Igor Dodon, for all his links to Moscow, has said that Transnistria is a divisive issue that should be handled cautiously and even be left in abeyance for the time being, lest it bring the ruling coalition in Chisinau down (IPN, June 28).

Given that Russia designed this process at origin, with some Western chancelleries (from varying considerations) tagging along, and given the risk it now poses to Moldova’s internal stability, a “freeze” on this process would be the lesser evil, compared with continuing these negotiations in their present form.

The “small steps” and “special status” are old goals on paper, but they are being pursued seriously as operational goals since 2016, inherited from Germany’s then–minister of foreign affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the US’s Barack Obama administration. Both were then in their final year in office, groping for some sort of legacy; and they viewed the “Transnistria conflict” as susceptible of resolution by agreement with Russia, potentially an example for a “special status” by agreement with Russia in Ukraine’s Donbas. This necessitates mischaracterizing the “Transnistria conflict” as internal to Moldova, rather than a Russia-Moldova inter-state conflict; and Russia as “mediator,” instead of aggressor. The flaws in these assumptions remain unexamined and continue to inspire the negotiations, to Moldova’s direct detriment and potentially Ukraine’s as well.

The “Transnistria conflict” is a unique case in which Russian and Western (European and US) diplomats have acted in consensus, without exhibiting any differences in their approach, in contrast to the other “frozen conflicts.” Germany is not one of the “mediators and observers” on this conflict, but has gained an influential role since 2018 by taking charge of the OSCE’s Chisinau Mission, which administers the negotiating process, overshadowing the US and EU, which merely hold observer status. Italy held the OSCE’s rotating chairmanship in 2018 and appointed the outspoken Russia-friendly politician Franco Frattini as the organization’s special representative on Moldova. The OSCE’s Slovakian chairmanship in 2019 unnecessarily (and departing from standard practice) has reappointed Frattini to this post. Moldova’s former governments, most recently that controlled by Vladimir Plahotniuc, passively accepted the “small steps” and the political objective of a “special status” for Transnistria.

While Russian and some Western diplomats seem interested in mechanical “progress” toward those goals (see above), serious reservations are heard from both sides of Moldova’s bicephalous authorities who took office one month ago. The ACUM (“NOW”) bloc disagrees with the negotiations’ goals in their substance, while President Dodon has grown cautious and would play for time rather than be rushed into political negotiations.

Moldova’s new prime minister, Maia Sandu (from ACUM), surprised the ambassadors’ group by challenging some fundamentals of these negotiations head on: the political objective, the direction of the “small steps,” and the impunity tacitly granted to Transnistria’s organized crime (Moldpres, July 12).

“We owe some answers to our citizens,” Sandu told the ambassadors. “What is the goal of these negotiations? On the one hand, it is to settle this conflict politically, based on Moldova’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. On the other hand, Tiraspol pursues the goal of independence. Where, then, is the end station of this process, given these mutually exclusive objectives? And which one of these objectives is being served by the policy of small steps? Throughout these years Chisinau has manifested openness toward Tiraspol. The latter has been accepted as a side to the negotiating process. Transnistrian residents enjoy freedom of movement in Moldova and beyond, benefit from various projects, and Transnistria itself is part of Moldova’s free-trade-zone with the EU. And yet, we are no closer to a political settlement… The negotiating process must help combat Transnistria’s corruption and smuggling; this

[anti-crime effort]

must become a priority. As long as Transnistria remains a major source of illegal enrichment for certain people, there cannot be any real progress toward a political solution” (Moldpres, July 13).

The OSCE Mission’s chief, German diplomat Claus Neukirch, responding on the ambassadors’ group’s behalf, did not address those points. He simply reaffirmed that the goal is indeed to advance by small steps toward a special status for Transnistria (Moldpres, July 12). This repartee reflects: a) the OSCE’s de facto seniority over the mere “observers,” the US and the EU, in this negotiating process, b) Russia’s insurmountable influence in the OSCE, and c) the German government’s considering a possible accommodation with Russia in Moldova, after Berlin’s failed attempts (2014–2017) to promote the Russian-drafted special status for Ukraine’s Donbas.

The ambassadors’ group met as well with President Dodon and Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Vasilii Shova, in Chisinau. Even Dodon expressed serious, if implicit reservations about the prompt resumption of negotiations that the OSCE, Moscow and Tiraspol seem keen to launch now. Instead, Dodon suggested delaying any political negotiations into next year and adopting a different set of three priorities instead: “democratization of Transnistria, free movement of people and goods throughout Moldova’s territory, and reestablishment of a single economic space in the whole of Moldova” (Moldpres, July 12). Without repudiating the small steps, this new set of priorities reflects Dodon’s reluctance to accelerate the political negotiations (see above). What Dodon has explicitly cast aside is his old, pet “federalization” project.

Moldova’s regime change in June 2019 has overtaken some of the key assumptions of Western diplomacy in the Transnistria conflict-settlement negotiations.

One Western assumption relates to the settlement’s content. It holds that the settlement (“special status”) must be negotiated and enacted with a Russian-installed, Moscow-loyal leadership in Tiraspol. This would conserve Transnistria’s existing geopolitical role and socio-political system, as Tiraspol itself describes it: a strategic outpost of Russia, and a showcase of political-cultural assimilation of non-Russians into the Russian World. At no point did Western diplomacy contemplate requiring political change in Transnistria as a prerequisite to any settlement. Instead, by dint of inertia, the “small steps” have been moving forward toward the goal of a special status. Russia could not alone have advanced its interests as it has through these negotiations. Western indifference or, since 2016, Western consent allowed this evolution, enabling Moscow to pose as a team player in the 5+2 format. The direction of this movement is a piecemeal sovereignization of Transnistria and corresponding de-sovereignization of Moldova in that territory (see EDM, September 20, 26, 2018).

Moldova’s new prime minister, Maia Sandu, however, has called for linking the negotiations with internal change in Transnistria. Combating Transnistria’s corruption and smuggling must become a priority, failing which there cannot be any real “small steps” toward a political solution, Sandu told a large visiting group of ambassadors involved in these negotiations. Even President Igor Dodon, who had earlier been keen to accelerate the negotiations with Tiraspol, suggested to the visiting diplomats to prioritize “human rights and democratization in Transnistria” over political negotiations (Moldpres, July 12; see EDM, July 17). Thus, slowing down and rethinking the negotiations, and linking them to internal change in Transnistria, is an idea that is taking shape in Chisinau following the regime change.

A related Western assumption relates to the settlement’s process, both formal and, especially, informal. The assumption previously held that Moldova’s informal ruler Vladimir Plahotniuc and President Dodon would, through parallel efforts, continue to deliver “progress” in the negotiations. This assumption has also been invalidated—on both counts—following Moldova’s recent regime change. Plahotniuc had delivered on the “small steps” in 2017–2018, using both his internal authority and direct relationship with his separatist counterpart, Viktor Gushan, Transnistria’s informal “oligarchic” ruler. However, Plahotniuc fell from power in June 2019. For his part, Dodon was thwarted in his frantic efforts to negotiate with Transnistria’s “official” leader, Vadim Krasnoselski, toward a faster resolution. The Kremlin, content with the “small steps,” has declined to nudge Krasnoselski into negotiations with Dodon. Instead, Moscow wants Tiraspol to deal with Western diplomats directly. This has worked well for Tiraspol until now.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s triple-headed management of these negotiations (Slovakian rotational chairmanship, German leadership of the OSCE’s Chisinau Mission, and Italian occupancy of the Special Representative’s post) undoubtedly planned for 2019 on that old, accustomed basis. But Plahotniuc is no more; and Dodon is deeply frustrated by Moscow’s preference for direct negotiations between Tiraspol and Western diplomatic envoys, bypassing Chisinau and depriving Dodon of his domestic political card as Moldova’s reintegrator. This helps explain Dodon’s remarks to Western diplomats about the need for political change in Transnistria (see above).

A third Western assumption, invalidated by Moldova’s regime change, concerns the internal political basis for negotiating a solution to the Transnistria conflict. That assumption held that it was at least desirable, perhaps necessary, to bring Plahotniuc and Dodon to a consensus on this issue. However, three changes have intervened: a) Plahotniuc’s fall, b) Dodon’s official abandonment of the goal of federalization and his new, go-slow approach to political negotiations (see EDM, July 18); and c) the sharp questioning of the “small steps” policy by the ACUM (“NOW”) bloc in the ACUM-Socialist governing coalition. These recent developments have totally changed the prerequisites to a political consensus in Chisinau regarding the resolution of the Transnistria conflict.

The only consensus in Moldova’s bicephallous governing coalition is that a faster pace of international negotiations (in the 5+2 format) could fatally split the coalition. Both of its components prefer to delay any such denouement as long as feasible. Both prioritize cooperation on pressing domestic issues over divisive “geopolitical” issues.

The coalition’s two components will be equally influential in shaping Chisinau’s position in these negotiations; and they will not necessarily come into confrontation with each other. The chief negotiator, Deputy Prime Minister Vasilii Shova, closely linked with Dodon, has handled the Transnistria dossier in one way or another ever since 1991 (Noi.md, July 1, 2019), personifying Chisinau’s institutional-bureaucratic memory on this issue. Shova is hardly a strategic conceptualizer but rather a meticulous executant of presidential instructions.

On the ACUM side, a number of parliamentary deputies, first and foremost Oazu Nantoi and Igor Munteanu, are the top experts on the Transnistria conflict from the perspective of the pro-Western civil society, and now as parliamentarians. They have a strong track record of resisting “federalization,” “special status” or “small steps,” and of proposing alternative concepts of conflict-resolution. These include a concept of Transnistria’s political transformation and demilitarization as a prerequisite to any settlement of the conflict, but also a blocking concept of the unacceptable “Red Lines” of an externally-driven solution.

These two centers of influence will probably balance each other out in the governing coalition. Such balance—and, probably, informal consultations between them—should avoid both pitfalls that lie ahead: either continuing “small steps” (sovereignizing Transnistria, de-sovereignizing Moldova) or a breakup of the governing coalition over this issue.

A syndrome of impunity characterizes Transnistria’s attitude toward the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the lead international actor in the Transnistria conflict-management and -resolution process. With Moscow’s support, Tiraspol is continually stretching the limits of the OSCE’s tolerance of Transnistrian breaches of the ground rules of this process. Several recent episodes provide a representative snapshot of the politics and the psychology of this relationship.

On July 11, Transnistria’s representative, Leonid Manakov, delivered a speech during an official session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, seeking observer status for Transnistria—a form of international quasi-recognition. Manakov is the head of the “Transnistrian Republic’s Official Representation in the Russian Federation,” which opened in January this year in downtown Moscow. The Moldovan government protested against the existence of this office more than once, and also over the Geneva speech. The OSCE kept silent, although both of Tiraspol’s moves contravene its status in the OSCE-led negotiating process. On July 12, Chisinau protested against Tiraspol’s decree that tightens the restrictions on movement across “Transnistria’s state border” (demarcation line within Moldova) by “foreign citizens” (i.e., Moldova’s citizens). The OSCE remained silent again, although it officially promotes free movement on the negotiating agenda.

At the same time, the OSCE Mission has even-handedly urged both “sides” to refrain from holding military exercises in the buffer zone, although it is Transnistria that routinely holds such exercises, sometimes jointly with Russian troops. Most recently, Tiraspol militarized its unlawful “border” checkpoints (on the demarcation line from the rest of Moldova) and installed additional “Transnistrian border troops” there. The OSCE Mission does not make an issue of all this, possibly for fear of exposing the organization’s incapacity to react effectively (Mfa-pmr.org, President.gos.pmr.org, July 11, 12; Moldpres, July 11, 12, 26; RFE/RL, July 24).

The OSCE Mission tolerates all this passively because Russia is the real actor behind Tiraspol’s moves. It is Russia that is hosting Transnistria’s representation in Moscow, Russia that co-opted Manakov into its delegation in Geneva—giving Tiraspol the floor there—and it is Russia that regularly conducts joint exercises of its troops with Transnistrian-flagged troops (themselves integrated into Russia’s command chain). The OSCE’s internal system, however, precludes the organization and its field missions from taking positions contrary to Russia’s interests on European security affairs (participant countries may do so in their own name within the OSCE, but not the organization or its representatives). Unable to cope with Tiraspol’s day-to-day provocations at the tactical level, and gagged by Russia’s veto, the OSCE presides over a negotiating process that consolidates Transnistria’s functional separation from Moldova.

The OSCE, however, is also a proactive contributor to this process. The current name of that process is the Berlin 2016 Package of “small steps,” which OSCE diplomats work to complete and develop further. This process requires unilateral Moldovan socio-economic and legal concessions to Tiraspol, cementing at the same time the political and military status quo that favors Tiraspol and Moscow. They win thereby on both counts.

The primary origins of this process are traceable to the measures proposed by Russia’s then–prime minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 as preconditions to any political resolution of the Transnistria conflict. Moscow went on to block the whole process from 2011 until 2016, the year of the OSCE’s German chairmanship and final year of Frank-Walter Steinmeier as foreign minister. Steinmeier’s small-steps package, coordinated with Russia ab initio, is more substance-filled and streamlined than Medvedev’s concept had been; but the basic rationale remains that of meeting Russian preconditions to a resolution of the Transnistria conflict. Another Russia-friendly diplomat, Franco Frattini, was appointed by the OSCE’s Italian and Slovakian chairmanships in 2018 and 2019, respectively, to promote the Berlin Package.

Russia’s tactic consists of adding precondition upon precondition to withdrawing its forces from Moldova’s territory. The OSCE’s 1999 summit decisions (not vetoed by Russia) had stipulated the early, complete, unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces. In 2002, however, the OSCE decided, at Russia’s insistence, to introduce the notion of “conditions,” without specifying what they were, thus leaving them up to Russia’s interpretation. In 2003, the OSCE simply eliminated the withdrawal deadline. From 2005 onward, German diplomacy under Steinmeier argued, in the OSCE and elsewhere, that Russian “peacekeeping” troops are a stabilizing factor and should remain in place (their illegal status notwithstanding). In 2009, Russia introduced Medvedev’s concept (see above), a precursor to Berlin’s 2016 “small steps” and their current expansion.

Meanwhile, Russia has added the “permanent neutrality of Moldova under reliable guarantees” as yet another precondition to the resolution of the Transnistria conflict. Russia refuses to withdraw its troops until a political solution is agreed upon. And that solution must (under the Russian-written ground rules of the 5+2 format) be “acceptable to both sides,” i.e. subject to Tiraspol’s veto, which conveniently frees Russia from the onus of using its own veto.

It is, therefore, chimerical to believe, and misleading to pretend, that satisfying Moscow on the Berlin Package would suffice to meet Russia’s preconditions for negotiating a political and military resolution of this conflict. Chisinau had apparently chosen to believe in this linkage during Vladimir Plahotniuc’s rule, but is reconsidering its view after the regime change. The small steps are not preconditions to a solution, but merely to starting negotiations toward a solution. The participants in the 5+2 negotiating format define the eventual solution as Transnistria’s return to Moldova with a “special status”—the euphemism for a negotiated federalization.

Russian and Western diplomacy in consonance employ that euphemism because federalization is anathema in Moldova. Even President Igor Dodon has acknowledged this fact, following the recent regime change in Chisinau. A long-time proponent of federalization, Dodon has now cast this goal aside, declining to be rushed into political negotiations and suggesting a slow-down instead (see EDM, July 18).

The Berlin Package is not a finite one but seemingly open-ended, now being referenced as “Berlin Plus.” Its “small steps” are a pied piper’s tune. It seeks to guide Moldova toward sovereignizing Transnistria in the form of a special status, pre-determining its elements without political negotiations, and without seeking a quid pro quo in the form of progress on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldova’s territory.

The 5+2 group—Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United States, the European Union, Chisinau, Tiraspol, in this shape since 2005—is officially titled as “Permanent Conference for Political Questions in the Framework of the Negotiating Process on the Transdniestrian Settlement” (its Russian-defined terms of reference). Even under these terms, the 5+2 group is officially tasked to promote and negotiate a political solution. However, this group has in recent years been downgraded and used for promoting socio-economic measures with legal consequences in Tiraspol’s favor Those “small steps” in the Berlin Package (see Part Three, EDM July 29) have become the heart of the 5+2 group’s work. They are officially promoted as “measures to improve the life of the inhabitants on both sides,” as if to redefine the 5+2 from a political-diplomatic to a social-work forum. Some residents might benefit in some peripheral ways, but the main beneficiaries are Transnistria’s authorities.

The 5+2 annual meeting this coming October seems set to consider the possible recognition in some form of Transnistria’s distinctive banking system, its telephone network, and its railroad. These would become the next “small steps” under the generic, open-ended Berlin Package. The OSCE looks forward to the approval of those measures in a “result-oriented meeting” (Mfa.gospmr.org, July 24; Moldpres, July 24, 25).

The socio-economic “small steps” began producing legal consequences already in 2018: recognizing distinctive Transnistrian car license plates for international traffic, erasing Moldova’s law on private agricultural land ownership in the Tiraspol-controlled territory (thus turning Moldovan farmers into conditional tenants), renouncing Chisinau’s earlier legal jurisdiction over the “Moldovan”-language schools that use the Latin script (these schools are merely tolerated now, and barely) (see EDM, July 23, 2018; September 20, 26, 2018).

Such steps are cumulatively eroding Moldova’s formally recognized titles to sovereignty in Transnistria. The steps currently under discussion on banking, the telephone system, and the railroad, could advance this trend further. While piecemeal, the trend points toward a de-sovereignization of Moldova and, correspondingly, sovereignization of Transnistria.

Those arrangements (and the planned ones ahead) are, ostensibly, bilateral ones between Chisinau and Tiraspol under the OSCE’s mediation. Yet, they need moral-political blessing in the 5+2 framework in order to be seen as legitimate—which, from Moldova’s standpoint, means the blessing of the EU and the US within that collective framework.

Brussels’s and Washington’s presence in this format is only symbolic. They are merely observers to the negotiations (they can look on and comment), a status inferior to that of Russia, the OSCE, and Ukraine as full participants. But the OSCE—outwardly the lead mediator—is not an independent actor, laboring as it does under Russia’s veto power inside the organization. Washington has, from time to time, worked around the 5+2 group, using instead the US-held post of OSCE Mission Chief to nudge Chisinau into the small steps of the Berlin process in 2017–2018. This confused Chisinau at the official level and disappointed Chisinau’s core pro-Western groups. Brussels is practicing its own economic diplomacy toward Transnistria, while the EU’s position in the 5+2 group follows Germany’s “small steps” policy. Germany also pursues its own policy, outside the 5+2 format; but Germany has recently entered the 5+2 format semi-officially by taking (from the US) the helm of OSCE’s Chisinau Mission and promoting the Berlin Package. Slovakia is chairing the OSCE in Vienna this year but has agreed to prolong the mandate of Moscow’s self-declared friend, Franco Frattini, as the OSCE chairmanship’s representative in these negotiations. Ukrainian diplomats, worried that a possible special status for Transnistria could set a precedent to be used against Ukraine, have nevertheless hunkered down in the 5+2 forum until now (RFE/RL, July 1).

The 5+2 forum has failed both to provide a genuine negotiating platform and to protect Moldova’s interests. Failure was unavoidable since Western diplomacy accepted Russia’s terms for this group’s composition and ground rules. From 2005 onward, Russia used this forum to imitate negotiations while Transnistria consolidated its de facto statehood. Western diplomacy went along passively for a decade but shifted to a more active stance from 2016 onward with the Berlin Package. This is a rare case (and the only case of a post-Soviet conflict) in which Russian and Western diplomacy seem to have worked out a consensus.

The official designation, “negotiating process,” correctly suggests that it is not “frozen.” It is crawling forward but in the wrong direction. A temporary, undeclared freeze would be the least bad option in this situation and could still be considered informally by some of the participants in the 5+2 negotiating format, ahead of the annual meeting in October and the OSCE’s own year-end meeting.

Advancing this process any further is possible only at Moldova’s expense and to Russia’s and Transnistria’s continuing satisfaction. The OSCE’s institutional-bureaucratic interest drives it to “move forward” and “show results,” particularly by conference deadlines (twice in Bratislava this year). Berlin is also vested in this process in the context of its own policy toward Russia. But there is no discernible reason for Washington, Brussels or Kyiv to promote such a process. They could justifiably halt this process temporarily, for a thorough reconsideration of its premises and its objectives. A pause for thought is long overdue, and it need not be termed a “freeze” even if it would amount to one.

Article first published by Eurasia Daily Monitor on four parts 17-29 July 2019