Be a teacher - be a hero

Last Thursday, I attended a conference at Georgetown on the resolution of the conflict in Transnistria. I took detailed notes and hope to post a few portions of them here in the coming weeks, final exams notwithstanding. The conference had two panels, one with "civil society" representatives and the other with officials - mainly ambassadors - from all of the entities involved in the (non-existent at the moment) 5+2 format talks except for the OSCE and the Transnistrian de facto government itself. Out of all the people who spoke, the most impressive and inspiring was an educator who had travelled all the way from Transnistria to tell his story in Washington:

Alexei Catan, head of the Evrica NGO and Lyceum in Rybnitsa, located in Transnistria, was introduced by Vlad Spanu as one of the “true heroes,” someone who has stayed put in Transnistria and fought for reintegration with Moldova.

Catan started his remarks by noting that he represents around 700 parents as well as all of the schools located in Transnistria which still follow the right-bank Moldovan curriculum. This includes seven lyceums which on matters of curriculum answer to Chisinau and teach in Romanian using the Latin alphabet. Since 1989, Catan said, he has taught only using the Latin alphabet, but in 2004 the pressure against doing so in Transnistria reached its apogee. First in Tiraspol, and then in Rybnitsa, the Transnistrian militia destroyed classrooms in Romanian-language schools. Seven parents and one teacher were arrested, tried, and jailed.

The conditions of their imprisonment were difficult to imagine in the 21^st century: 20 to 25 people in an 18-square-meter cell, who had to take turns sleeping and were allowed only two visits per day to a toilet, having to use a bucket in their cell the rest of the time. They were fed only once a day and were not even given enough spoons to eat what they were fed. While Catan never had any dealings with the Soviet authorities, he imagines this might be what treatment at their hands was like. It was a difficult shock for intellectuals who had never had to deal with this type of treatment.

Why did Catan and his colleagues endure this? Because they are citizens of the Republic of Moldova and support the integration of the country; and are willing to do anything possible to make it happen. Transnistrian statistics say that 40% of the population of the region is ethnically Moldovan. However, these people have no access to any kind of media in their own language and are not represented in the government. The only language used in Transnistria is Russian, in spite of the existence of three so-called constitutional languages.

Romanian-speakers do not have the chance to teach their children as they want, and those children are unable to continue their studies in Romanian if they have grown up using only the Cyrillic alphabet. If students want and are able to continue their education in Romanian, they have to go to Chisinau. Graduates of Chisinau universities generally do not want to return to Transnistria and have a difficult time if they decide to do so – diplomas issued in Chisinau are not recognized by the Transnistrian authorities. This is being done specifically to promote Russification and to push the Moldovans out of the region. Moldovans must defend themselves somehow against this policy.

Although the Moldovans in Transnistria are frequently criticized by Chisinau for not doing enough, they vote in Moldovan elections and do as much as possible. The majority of residents of Transnistria are citizens of the Republic of Moldova. Possibly due to pressure from Russia, there has been a recent trend of people renouncing their Moldovan citizenship and taking Russian citizenship. Russia has opened illegal consular offices in Transnistria and quickly grants Russian citizenship to people there without the proper, legally required documentation. Eventually, there will be more Russian citizens in Transnistria than Moldovan citizens, and the situation will be similar to what has happened in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In addition, residents of Transnistria who are Moldovan citizens are unable to vote in local elections, own businesses, or enjoy other rights unless they accept Transnistrian “citizenship.” Catan stressed that this was a huge infringement on the rights of ethnic Moldovans in Transnistria. Since 1990, they have had to travel outside of the region in order to vote in Moldovan elections; the Transnistrian de facto government has established customs and migration posts on all roads crossing the border between Moldova and Transnistria; these posts impose an entry/exit tax of 8 lei on Moldovan citizens only, which is “humiliating”; and Moldovan citizens are searched at these border crossings.

The town of Rezina is two kilometers from Rybnitsa, and lots of people from Rezina work in Rybnitsa. Every time they cross the border, they have to pay this tax. Also, without Transnistrian “citizenship,” people who work in Transnistria are required to pay income tax to the Transnistrian de facto government at a rate of 35%.

All of this takes place under the supervision of the Russian peacekeeping forces, whose only mission is to preserve the status quo. It is said that there has been no shooting in the region since 1992 thanks to the Russian peacekeepers, but this is no great achievement, because the people on the right bank and the left bank of the Dniester are one people and have no reason to shoot each other. A change to the makeup of the peacekeeping forces would change public opinion so that Transnistrians would realize that the Russian peacekeepers are not doing a good job.

Catan expressed a desire to see the peacekeeping force internationalized but acknowledged that it would of course depend on “higher powers.” He noted that he had experienced the inefficiency of the Russian peacekeeping forces in 2004. They were called twice to help when the Romanian-language educators and parents of schoolchildren were besieged in their school, but they did not resolve the situation.

Catan then spoke about democratization. His point of view is that the Smirnov regime cannot be democratized. He made a few statements on behalf of the members of Transnistrian civil society organizations as their representative. In the West, some people believe that democratization can happen through the development of a civil society. Catan does not believe this is possible in Transnistria, but he still believes that civil society development should be promoted.

Even Transnistrian officials have understood the need to create the impression that civil society is being developed. Unfortunately, the NGOs which exist in Transnistria cannot say a word against the authorities. Last winter, Catan was looking for a representative of a Transnistrian NGO to represent a point of view on a TV show. He was unable to find anyone willing to appear on the air and was told that some of the people he called were visited by the local security services the next day.

People are afraid – even those who want to speak out are fearful of doing so. More support from international organizations is needed for civil society and NGOs in Transnistria that believe in and support integration of the country. In closing, Catan called on everyone present to do everything possible to bring Moldova under the influence of the West.

Motherland: a photoset from Russia

Photographer Simon Roberts travelled across Russia for a year, and the BBC recently ran a few photographic gems from his trip. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Motherland is the result of British photographer Simon Roberts’ year long journey throughout Russia with his wife Sarah, in which they visited over 200 locations.


Evgenia is a student who works part time as a waitress whilst studying dentistry at the university in Magadan. Its remote location means the cost of living is among the highest in Russia leading to a steady decline in the city’s population.

"Trafficking Arms on Europe's Doorstep"

Recently, there was some to-do about a French documentary about the color revolutions that was aired in Russia on the channel Rossiia (perhaps the most state-run of all state-run Russian TV channels) in a questionably edited version shortly after the Dissenters' March. The film was heavily advertised and purportedly showed Western involvement in the color revolutions in the post-Soviet space and Serbia. I couldn't find the original version on YouTube or Google Video. Here is (I think) the version that aired on Russian TV, with some portions edited out and the name of the film's French producer also chopped from the credits.

Here is another French documentary film, released last year. This one investigates the allegations that the Transnistrian de facto government has been and is engaged in trafficking arms - both those remaining in the Soviet-era Colbasna stockpile and small arms which it may be producing in its own factories. It has been said that the recent introduction of EUBAM border monitors conclusively proves that there is no longer any cross-border arms smuggling in the region; however, this film notes the existence of an airstrip in Tiraspol which may provide the opportunity for flying weapons out.

The tone of the film is fairly one-sided, but it is definitely worth watching. I've embedded a clip with the first 10 minutes below. Beneath the embedded clip are links to the other four ten-minute sections of the film.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

On the bright side, The Bright Line...

I'm fortunate enough to be on the editorial staff of a small (print run of about 700 copies, put together by a few student editors) arts and literary journal published by and for Georgetown Law students. It has been fun to see some of my photographs appear in print, although of course our publication is fairly modest in scope. Next year, we're hoping to establish an online presence.

Anyway, to celebrate the printing of what was unfortunately our only issue this year (next year, there will be one per semester!), I've decided to post the photos I had in the issue. I immodestly suggest clicking on them to expand for full appreciation. And yes, I know it's pretentious to take black-and-white photos and give them titles...

Front Cover (can't remember the title, but we forgot to note
a title inside anyway - Tbilisi, Georgia, Aug. 13, 2006)

CDG Ceiling (Paris, France, Aug. 19, 2006)

Christmas Morning (St. Petersburg, Russia, Dec. 25, 2005)

Dusha Peterburga (with apologies to Antsyferov)
(St. Petersburg, Russia, June 18, 2006)

Robot Che (Moscow, June 28, 2006)
We ran a poem about robots, and this seemed to fit.

Shadow of Faith (Tbilisi, Georgia, Aug. 13, 2006)

Off the Air (St. Petersburg, July 22, 2006)
This one ran with a poem (not mine) called
"Turning Forty Feeling Like an A**hole"

Too Much Fun (Paris, France, Aug. 19, 2006)

Moscow 2006 (Moscow, Russia, June 30, 2006)

[Update: I wanted to add a link to the Flickr photoset containing all of my submissions to the Spring 2007 issue - most of which, of course, didn't make it in]

Mini-documentary on EU Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM)

The EU is "Working Together for Regional Security and Economic Development on the Moldovan-Ukrainian Border." One of the goals has been to monitor and cut down on the level of smuggling on that border.

From the EUBAM website:

EUBAM was established by the EU at the joint request of the Presidents of Moldova and Ukraine in their joint letter of 2 June 2005.

While the management of the border guard and customs services is firmly in the hands of the experienced personnel of the two states, the EU stands ready to assist and advise wherever this may be helpful. The Mission is seeking to make a sustainable contribution to enhancing the delivery of good quality border and customs services to the citizens of Moldova and Ukraine.

Our common aim is a system of border and customs controls and border surveillance which meets not only European standards, but also, and especially, the legitimate needs of the citizens of each country.

I found this documentary on YouTube:

Downtown Tiraspol in pictures

"Board of Honor" on the wall of an enterprise near the bus station
- it was vacant when I first saw it in 1999, and it's still vacant today.

Lenin statue on the square in front of
the main government building.

Statue of Suvorov

Near the Suvorov statue. WWII memorial signage; the sign
on top of the building is promoting a construction company, I
think, and says, rather imperatively:
"We are building the city in which you will live!"

Street scene near the main government building.

Inside the wall is a time capsule.

The plaque is addressed
"To the generation of Tiraspolians who will greet the 100th
anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution"
and is inscribed as a
"Declaration of the workers of the city adopted at the rally
on 7 November 1967 dedicated to the 50th anniversary of...
[the Revolution, I assume, but the last bit of text has worn off]"

The billboard says "We love our city!"
The street-level signage is from the government-organized
youth organization "Proryv" - the PMR's answer to Russia's
Nashi - which uses Che Guevara for its logo.

Central movie theater "Kinoteatr Tiraspol"
The empty boards say "Today" and "Coming soon"

Ususally one sees tank trailers like this one selling
kvas, but in this land of the Kvint distillery (whose
logo is on the tank) and large-scale wine production,
they are used for wine also.

All of these photos were taken on Aug 7, 2006. I have run a couple of them before in black & white, in case they look familiar. There are some much more spectacular photos of Tiraspol available on Flickr.

A trip down memory lane: my first impression of the PMR

There has been a lot of discussion about Transnistria (among other things) in the comments section of Sean's blog recently. To grossly oversimplify, Transnistria is a part of Moldova that declared independence in 1990 and fought a brief war (aided by Russian troops) in 1992 for its de facto independence, which it enjoys to this day. I have been fortunate enough to visit the so-called PMR (Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic) several times in the past 10 years, albeit only for day trips. This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the my academic program's newsletter after my summer studying in Moldova in 1999 (picture at right is from last summer - the entrance to the "Prokhlada" bar in the heart of Tiraspol):

During the last week of my visit to Moldova, my language classes were over, and I finally had the chance to visit the two places within Moldova to which no one wanted to accompany me. First, I visited Comrat, the capital of the semi-autonomous region of Gagauzia. My Chisinau hosts questioned my desire to visit what they saw as no more than a dusty provincial town, but I resisted their efforts to talk me out of it and even managed to have friends of theirs meet me off the bus and show me the town. I was met by a very interesting fellow who identifies himself as ethnically Moldovan, even though his last name is Rusu. He was one of the few people I met who was neither ashamed of his past Communist Party involvement nor particularly hostile toward Moldova’s current direction. A bit of wisdom he imparted as we passed through Comrat’s 2-block-long bazaar suggested he has retained a suspicion of free trade. “Sometimes two fools meet in the bazaar,” he said. “One is selling, and the other is buying.”

When I visited Comrat, there was only a short time left until elections for the local leadership, and the town was festooned with campaign posters. Pointing to the face on the most common poster, my host proclaimed, “That’s our biggest crook.” This was a sentiment I heard expressed rather frequently, about local government and especially about the federal government. When I asked if much attention was being paid to the upcoming elections in Gagauzia, my host responded affirmatively. My comment that this was probably a good thing was met with total disagreement.

“The politicians spend too much time and money on campaigning and on pretty posters, and not enough on practical matters,” I was told. This would seem to be at least one problem about which the electorate in the U.S. can commiserate with the Moldovans. Comrat was indeed sleepier than Chisinau--the centerpiece of my day-trip there was a lengthy afternoon nap--and the Lenin statue in front of the local government building added an anachronistic touch. Nevertheless, the infrastructure was far better than I had been told to expect, with reasonably well-paved roads and progress being made on a network of city water mains, apparently with assistance from the Turkish government. The other “local capital” I visited during my last week in Moldova showed no such signs of renewal and was decidedly less welcoming and relaxing.

I visited Tiraspol, the capital of secessionist Transnistria, on my last full day in Moldova. In retrospect, this was probably unwise, given the warnings I had received about travelling in this lawless region, but the lack of a document check at the border was reassuring. I was eager to change some money at the bus station in order to get my hands on some of the ridiculously worthless Transnistrian rubles. The sign specifying exchange rates was unintelligible, perhaps because, as I soon found out, these rubles were around three million to the dollar. Handing over three dollars got me a half-inch-thick wad of 50,000-ruble notes, in addition to several million rubles in 500,000-ruble notes. Looking more closely, I saw that the former had been denominated at 5 rubles when they were first printed in 1994, and that the extra zeroes had been creatively added on a second run through the presses in 1996. Thus bankrolled, I proceeded toward the city center under a dreary rain shower.

Tiraspol looked like the predictable result of a nondescript Soviet city after ten years of neglect. The “Board of Honor” on the building nearest the bus station was still sporting a stern portrait of Lenin at one end and a hammer and sickle at the other, but was otherwise empty. The main park, with a statue of Kirov looking out over an array of non-functioning fountains and stray dogs, was hopelessly overgrown, although an elderly man with a scythe seemed to be making an attempt at beautification. The residential areas were pure USSR, orderly rows of prefab-concrete apartment buildings somewhat the worse for wear, with trash heaps in the middle of the sidewalk at random intervals.

Reaching Tiraspol’s “downtown,” I noticed that Transnistria had other trappings of an independent state besides its currency. Some of the cars had European-style license plates with a Transnistrian flag on them, although many still had Soviet-era plates. There was a local bank, Prisbank, but it did not look as prosperous as the local branch of Gazprombank. Some Moldovans say that Transnistria has become the hideout for local mafia structures, a haven for arms and drug smugglers, as well as for traders in adoptable infants. All of this may well be true, but none of it was reflected by the underpopulated city market where desultory sellers hawked goods a cut below what I saw in Comrat. I saw no late-model luxury cars and in fact very few cars at all--most of the market-goers were disembarking from packed trolleybusses and trudging across a mucky field with a grand statue of Suvorov on horseback. In a nearby park I found the most interesting of the many Soviet-era memorials which remain in Transnistria: a time capsule from 1967, inscribed to the generation of Tiraspolians who were supposed to meet the 100th anniversary of the Revolution in 2017.

As in Comrat, the former local seat of government is graced with a large Lenin statue, but I found out that the people inside the building in Tiraspol take themselves a little more seriously. The Transnistrian White House, if you will, is a grand, Soviet-style monolith, and I wanted a photograph of this building, with its tri-lingual signage (in the three official languages of Transnistria, Russian, Ukrainian, and Moldovan--the latter in cyrillic script, of course) and the red-and-green “national” flag billowing proudly in the wind. Little did I know that it was considered a strategically significant building by the government. Although there were no signs posted to keep me from taking pictures, a young member of the “President’s Security Service” crossed the square and tracked me down at my next stop, the State History Museum. I never got to see the exhibit on “The First Ten Years of the Transnistrian Moldavian Republic,” because I was forced to accompany this man into the building I had just photographed, without being told what I had done wrong.

Needless to say, I began having paranoid thoughts that this was a shakedown, that my documents would not be in order since they had not been checked coming across the border, that since I only had ten dollars they would hold me for 24 hours and cause me to miss my flight, etc. In fact, I was impressed at how businesslike President Smirnov’s bodyguards were in enforcing the prohibition on photographing government buildings without permission. It was all very Soviet, from the way I had to answer my way through several layers of questions from several layers of authorities before I got to the militia captain who was actually responsible for violations of this sort to the nasty tone in which he asked, “So, are you allowed to photograph government buildings in America?” Since it took him 45 minutes to get to the scene of the crime (perhaps he decided not to rush when the guy telephoning in told him that “only picture-taking occurred--no other incidents.”), I had plenty of time to chat with the Transnistrian equivalent of the Secret Service. When the head of this crucial security organization remarked that life in the U.S. must be better and started to complain about living conditions, salaries, and the disparate perks given to members of government, I was at a loss for words.

Indeed, there did not seem to be much going on in the main lobby of the seat of Transnistrian power. One guard was posted in front of the main doors, looking out over the square for potential security threats like me. Cases of mineral water were being unloaded and placed in an elevator to go up to the offices of government deputies, and my captors tried to get the deliveryman to give them a bottle in exchange for two empties. When this did not succeed, one of them bitterly noted that of course each deputy needed a full case, because “after all, they have families and friends.” As soon as he arrived, the captain reminded me to be nervous by constructing the familiar, suspiciously hostile dynamic of Soviet authorities confronting a foreigner. He grilled me about the purpose of my visit and made me expose my film, but he then let me go immediately and did not try to extort a bribe. Impressed with this example of honest if inefficient law enforcement, I nevertheless no longer felt welcome in Transnistria, and I caught the first available bus back to Chisinau.

The bribe-taking occurs on the border, actually, in my experience. Although since that first visit, I've had friendly experiences on the PMR's borders as well as unpleasant ones. And the major updates to the 1999 account above, from what I observed last summer, are that they have redenominated the PMR ruble to a reasonable exchange rate, the area around the Suvorov statue has been nicely landscaped, and I wasn't stopped for taking pictures anywhere. Things in Tiraspol seemed marginally more prosperous, and the amount of time a foreigner is allowed to be in the PMR without registering with the authorities has been increased from three hours to 24 hours - I'll try to post some photos later on.

A tiny bit more on Transnistria

As an addendum to my previous post about the possibility of a Transnistria settlement, here's an article from last Thursday's edition of the Romanian newspaper Ziua. It contains a rather unflattering photo of one of the officials responsible for negotiating on the Russian side, Yuri Zubakov. He was formerly Russia's ambassador to Moldova, and according to the article was one of the authors of the 2003 Kozak Memorandum, which outlined a settlement proposal favorable to Transnistria and Russia and was ultimately rejected by Moldovan President Voronin.

Tiraspol, Moldova, Aug. 7, 2006.

R.I.P., B.N.Y.

I just heard on NPR that Boris Yeltsin has passed away.

The Transnistrian conflict - is it really over?

[Image source]

Vladimir Socor had two articles in the Friday, April 13th (!) Eurasia Daily Monitor about a potential rush to a settlement of the long-unresolved secessionist conflict in Moldova. In the first article, "Voronin Pressured to Accept Russian Plan for Transnistria," he laid out some details of a settlement plan apparently negotiated directly between Moscow (by Security Council Deputy Secretary Yuri Zubakov) and Chisinau. Socor reported that Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin had been presenting the plan at policy conferences with a small number of top officials" where he "read out the salient points from a set of Russian-language documents."

Here's what Socor wrote on April 13 about how finalized the deal looked then:

Procedurally, it is envisaged that Russia and Moldova would first agree among themselves on how to proceed, whereupon they would officially inform the other members of the official negotiating format (the United States, European Union, OSCE, and Ukraine) and request their endorsement. In this way, the 5 + 2 format’s circumvention would be crowned with a fait accompli on Russian terms.

Socor concluded:

While Lavrov’s MFA handles the negotiations in the 5 + 2 format and has driven them into deadlock, Chisinau wishes to believe that Zubakov’s Security Council team is more flexible and less “dogmatic” than the Russian MFA.

Clearly, the Russian side does not negotiate in good faith through either of these two channels. Zubakov’s primary goal is apparently to misuse his channel in order to erode and degrade Chisinau’s package-deal proposal, adding conditions and procedures that would ultimately nullify its value.

In the second article, "Moscow Now Seeks to Tempt Voronin into Dissolving Parliament," Socor describes what might have to happen for the proposed settlement to be finalized and some of the consequences of moving forward with Russia's apparent plan:

The Russian side now seeks to tempt Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin into dissolving the parliament and changing or breaching the constitution for the sake of a settlement that seems illusory in any case.

The Communist Party controls 56 seats in the 101-seat parliament. This number falls short of the two-thirds majority necessary for changing the constitution. Dissolving the parliament in order to hold anticipated elections would also be an anti-constitutional move. Under Article 85 of the constitution, the parliament could only be dissolved if it fails to elect the head of state within three months, to confirm the government within three months, or to adopt legislation during a three-month period. None of these conditions obtain, however.

To circumvent the constitutional safeguards, some inner-circle members are advising Voronin to dismiss the government and instruct the Communist parliamentary majority to refrain from confirming a new government or enacting legislation during three months. The president would then dissolve the parliament and see to the election of an obedient one. An almost seduced president seems at times to believe that it would be a matter of political will and a test of his team’s strength to proceed along this path, while presidential lawyers would find some appropriate formula for forcing anticipated elections.

Moscow’s proposals also run counter to Moldova’s law on citizenship, which does not permit citizens of another country to be elected to parliament or serve in government. Tiraspol’s nominees to those positions would almost certainly be citizens of Russia, with loyalties focused on that country, not Moldova.

In the week since these two articles appeared, there have been a number of reactions in print and around the internet discussing the possibility that settlement - on mostly Russian terms - may be at hand.

Moldovan journalist Dumitru Minzarari posted a translation of one of the Socor pieces ("Voronin Pressured") into Russian on April 16 with the following introductory comment:

Rumors about the "Zubakov plan" discussed in the article have been circulating in the Moldovan political elite for some time.

There are a couple of quite interesting comments at that post analyzing the situation and breaking down the existence of two plans - one, the "package deal," which official Chisinau may be prepared to implement; and the other, the "Zubakov Plan," which would seem to require many more concessions on the part of Moldova. Here's a machine translation.

Minzarari posted on the next day his analysis of the situation surrounding the conflict resolution process during the week of April 6-11 - very interesting reading and serious analysis, although I'm afraid I don't have time to translate this one from Russian either and can only provide another machine translation (if anyone can recommend a better one, I'm all ears).

The post discusses some of the factors behind Russia's eagerness for a settlement, among them a goal of being known as a "stabilizing factor" in the CIS. That would certainly be a change. There are a couple of interesting comments at the post as well - check the machine translation if you don't know Russian but can decipher robot-English. In the second comment there, Minzarari concludes that "Chisinau uses the potential assistance of the West quite feebly. And not because they don't know how to use it - they don't want to."

The Economist's Edward Lucas posted his evaluation of the proposed settlement's prospects for success on April 19th:

It will be hard for outsiders to block the deal; they may not even bother to try. If they did, they might be called wreckers, given that both sides want it. Yet Mr Voronin's plan means that Russia has, for once, trumped the West.

Blogger Lucia Candu evaluated the situation from Moldova as follows:

This initiative is another "suprise-suprise!" action which is not being open to public debate. Until recently, available information seems to come from leaking unofficial sources. Politicians , experts and bloggers have already experessed their opionions on something that the wider public has not been properly informed about.

Kosmopolit has a negative take on the proposed settlement as well, and concludes, "All in all, a very “Russian” settlement plan…"

Jibs of Steady State commented on that post with his take on Russia's ability to resolve this and other post-Soviet conflicts - on Russia's terms:

I had this gut feeling that when Russia wants, it can settle conflicts - at a high price for Moldova though. I am sure similarly Russia could resolve with a single swipe the South Ossetian conflict, maybe even Abkhazian (would be harder though).

As long as the deal takes the country back to USSR, it will work overnight.

He also posted his own reaction to the plan at Steady State.

In all, the modus operandi in secretly negotiating and hastily revealing this "deal" appears similar to the one used by Russia to try to force a settlement on its terms in 2003 with the Kozak Memorandum, which was also negotiated outside of the official process and would have resulted in a settlement advantageous to Russia.

The so-called Zubakov Plan, however, does not yet appear to be a fait accompli. A Moldovan parliamentary leader has spoken out against it, and it will be interesting to see the public reactions in Chisinau and the reactions of the other participants in the formal negotiating process in the coming days. Western reaction and public outrage helped to scuttle the Kozak Memorandum several years ago - we'll see what happens this time.

Not surprisingly, Socor's analysis is not optimistic:

[Voronin] and his team calculate that Putin could only deliver a settlement, however “imperfect,” to Moldova during the next few months, before the presidential election campaign enters its main phase in Russia. They are being led to believe by Zubakov and others that Putin craves the laurels of an international peacemaker as he exits from the presidency; and that he would be clement to Moldova on the terms of settlement, if Moldova facilitates such an exit for him.

Moldova is negotiating under multiple pressures, some generated by Russia and some self-generated. Moscow and Tiraspol are stonewalling the negotiations on Transnistria. Russia’s politically motivated embargo has pushed Moldova to the brink of recession; while Moldova’s own failure to attract investments and diversify its export market is aggravating the Russian embargo’s impact. The president and the Communist Party badly need to come up with some achievements to show in next year’s parliamentary election campaign. [...]

Thus, Voronin seems very keen on reaching a bilateral accommodation with the Kremlin, given the less than two years to go in his final presidential mandate. He is worried about his place in the country’s history, if he fails to effectively address the country’s main problems -- deep poverty and the Transnistria conflict -- toward the end of his eight-year presidency. Thus he seems tempted to stake on Putin for illusory solutions on both counts.

Tiraspol, Moldova (near the bus station), Aug. 7, 2006.

I've spent way too much time this weekend thinking about Transnistria, but somehow it's much more interesting than preparing for next week's classes and the exams soon to follow...