Commentary by Anatol Golea, Infotag political observer.

The last week’s meeting between the Presidents of Moldova and Russia – Vladimir Voronin and Vladimir Putin – became perhaps the chief political event of recent time in Moldova, may be even more important and crucial than the approaching 15th anniversary of Moldova’s independence to be celebrated on August 27. The reason is clear: the Republic of Moldova will be marking this date in a complicated economic situation that has shaped lately exactly in the result of deterioration of relations with Russia.

The Moscow’s embargo on the imports of Moldovan meat, fruit, vegetable, wines and brandies, as well as its pushing up the rate on natural gas 2-fold has put many local enterprises, including the State Budget’s main breadwinners, on the verge of bankruptcy. Such a state of things gave Vladimir Voronin grounds to claim that exactly now Moldova is becoming a really independent state that needs to hold out and defend its genuine independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

Many a time has the President stated that the measures taken by Moldova are a political sanction against Moldova, and that all this is but the price Moldova must pay for its synonymous position on the Transnistria problem. In recent several weeks, however, President Voronin has somewhat softened up his stance. At the news conference Voronin convened shortly before going to Moscow for an informal CIS Summit last month, he surprised many by stating that the above measures by Russia were purely economic measures – that the market allegedly dictates rates on natural gas, so one should not tie the rate growth with politics. Voronin thus tried to make a signal for Moscow that Chisinau can and wants to bargain on de-frosting the bilateral relations.

The official Chisinau has long maintained that Vladimir Putin simply was not provided with all-out, objective information on Moldova, that he was misinformed by those who would not forgive to Voronin his refusal to sign in 2003 the Moldova-proposed memorandum on Transnistria problem settlement. The Moldovan official mass media were hinting then that as soon as the two leaders meet and exchange information, everything will become clear and all problems will be solved. That was precisely what Vladimir Voronin stated last April for the first time – that his meeting with the Russian President would take place “in the nearest time”. That somewhat premature statement seemed to have ruined the last spring’s meeting opportunity.

This time, the Moldovan Presidential Press Service was dumb to the last moment, although the Moscow press was writing about the forthcoming Voronin-Putin meeting yet on its eve. The official Chisinau had to undertake enormous diplomatic efforts to organize the meeting that was so long waited for by the Moldovan leader. The reason of such a long waiting was certainly not due to the extremely busy working schedule of Putin’s: in 2002, Vladimir Putin used to be no less busy than now, but he somehow found time to meet Voronin 17 times during the year – an absolute record between heads of state. The reason was in the resistance by some political forces surrounding the Russian President. It is known very well that Transnistria has a serious lobby in Moscow, and the lobby has redoubled efforts recently, doing everything it can to prevent the improvement of relations with Chisinau. That was why the agreement concerning the forthcoming meeting was kept in strict secrecy.

Mikhail Leontyev, a prominent Russian political scientist and a TV host, and an ardent mouthpiece of these forces [by the way, his “However” program is cut off the air from the Russia’s First Channel in Moldova], offered a supposition on the meeting’s eve that “Voronin’s coming to Moscow will be as useless as was Saakashvili’s coming to St. Petersburg”.

“Voronin certainly wants much from Moscow. He is daydreaming that Russia will cancel the current economic regime with respect to Moldova – the regime which does not at all imply sanctions. Simply, we have refused to be the exclusive buyer of Moldovan wines which nobody wants any more. For Chisinau, this is fatal”, said the Kremlin’s radical political observer.

Indeed, Leontyev was largely right. But the two Presidents were preparing to tackle not solely economic issues. It was of principle importance for them to ‘synchronize their watches’ on the most painful problem in the two countries’ relations – the Transnistria problem. Vladimir Voronin reiterated so many times the problem is the key reason of the misunderstandings that have broke out between Chisinau and Moscow, particularly after Moldova had begun showing more persistence, has succeeded in the internationalization of the Transnistria problem, has solved the question of Moldovan peasants’ access to their lands on the left, Transnistrian bank of the Dniester River, and has commenced restoring state order on the border. On the other hand, the last week’s settlement of the political crisis in Ukraine – by means of appointing Victor Yanukovitch as Prime Minister just on the eve of the Voronin-Putin meeting in Moscow – can well weaken Chisinau’s positions in the Transnistrian conflict settlement in the perspective.

On the meeting’s eve, some Moscow newspapers wrote that during the informal CIS Summit in July at which the two agreed to hold the meeting, Vladimir Voronin proposed a plan to Putin, according to which both sides would get a possibility to overcome the thorny situation with honor: namely, Russia withdraws its troops from Transnistria and agrees to the introduction of international forces into the region with an OSCE mandate; Russia cancels its bans on the imports of Moldovan crops and wines; Russia puts forward a new plan of Transnistrian question settlement. From its turn, Chisinau agrees to such new Russian plan based on the principles and provisions of the above-mentioned memorandum [aka Kozak Memorandum]; Moldova guarantees legislatively its neutrality and buries all plans concerning joining the NATO, with preservation of the republic’s pro-Europe orientation; Moldova withdraws its objections concerning Russia’s admission to the World Trade Organization.

The newspaper stories said Vladimir Voronin wrote that plan of his by hand, and did not put his signature under it. It’s hard to say if such plan existed or not. But, judging by the reactions after the meeting, the discussion of those questions advanced in approximately such a key. That gave food to some observers and the oppositional mass media to claim “that was the plan of Voronin’s capitulation to Moscow”.

Media information about the Voronin-Putin meeting was extremely scarce. While Chisinau attached an enormous significance to the event, in Moscow it remained almost unnoticed. It was far from the first headlines in the Russian television news programs, and there was nothing unusual in that, for the information was broadcast exclusively from the Kremlin’s point of view. Journalists were permitted to be present in the room only for shooting the protocol hand-shaking ceremony, during which the two leaders exchanged several routine, meaningless phrases. However, even those few words demonstrated clearly how reserved Putin was with his visitor. Contrary to tradition, the two did not make any statement for the press after their conversation.

That gave food for journalists’ guessing and interpretation. Judging by stories in the Moscow press, Voronin left the Russian capital with bare hands, for no visible results had been achieved by means of that meeting: one cannot really regard as a result Voronin’s statement on the agreed-on decision about the resumption of the activities of the Moldo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission for Trade and Economic Cooperation, because heretofore the Commission has not passed even a single meaningful, practical decision in its history.

Its Chairman, Russian Minister of Education and Sciences Andrei Fursenko stated to the press the sides had agreed on a soonest-possible work resumption by the Commission which is supposed to consider the entire spectrum of issues of the bilateral trade and economic cooperation, including in the industrial, energy and agricultural spheres, and interaction in the humanitarian field.

Several years ago, when the Moldo-Russian relation were only beginning to worsen, Chisinau was insisting on solving arising problems in the framework of this Commission. In reply, Moscow simply changed the Commission Chairman, appointing Minister of Education and Sciences Andrei Fursenko instead of his predecessor, Minister of Agriculture Alexei Gordeyev, thus hinting clearly which spheres were going to be dominating in the Moldo-Russian cooperation.

If to proceed from the principle that “the latter is remembered the best”, the above-mentioned brief statement by Fursenko after the meeting also indicates that Moscow would like to place emphasis on “interaction in the humanitarian field”. In Russia’s understanding, this means protection of the Russian-speaker population in Moldova, a status of the Russian language, and education problems – exactly what a minister of education is supposed to concentrate on. As for the “soonest-possible resumption of the Commission’s work’, this event may well be put off for quite a while, because Fursenko is certainly too busy at the beginning of a new academic year, and nobody seems to interfere into his work schedule in this period of the year: unlike his Moldovan colleague, the President of Russia preferred to abstain from convening ministers urgently, and did not order them to de-frost relations with Moldova straightaway.

Voronin was different. Upon return home, the first thing he did was to convoke the key figures in the country’s leadership, and to give such instructions to them. And it was only on the following day that he convened a somewhat ‘preferential’ news conference to cover the results of his Moscow voyage and the steps to be made next. That news conference was open only to the loyal-most journalists, who would certainly not permit themselves the luxury of a frivolous interpretation of the event.

Those journalists heard from Voronin that President Putin “repeatedly spoke for support of the Republic of Moldova’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity”. Of course, it would be much more convincing to hear those words not from Voronin, but at least once from Putin himself in TV cameras – the way the Kremlin Press Service does this so expertly. Alas, as no clear statements could be heard from Moscow, the local public had to swallow what it was offered to – to take on trust what Voronin stated to them in Chisinau.

Besides Chisinau’s emotions – that “it was a very sincere and positive conversation” and about “Mr. Putin’s openness and readiness to solve all problems”, there was one more thing that arrested the public’s attention: Voronin’s assertions about the neutrality of Moldova.

Strangely, but the neutrality question has become very topical in the recent time, after Moldova had signed the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) with the NATO. That document has not been published until now, which gave grounds for speculations by Transnistrian leaders and some political forces. For that reason, President Voronin and some Moldovan ministers stood up with statements about Moldova’s neutrality. The neutrality thesis, despite the opposition’s protests, was included even into the Moldovan Parliament’s Statement on the unlawfulness of the approaching September 17 referendum in Transnistria on the future of that region. And now here you are – another such statement made by Voronin after his Moscow trip. Frankly speaking, such statements seem somewhat strange, as if they are made for somebody in Moscow and Tiraspol. There is really no need to “fix the neutrality legislatively” if the neutrality principle has been fixed in the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova yet 12 years ago, and nobody since then has ever tried to cancel this principle.

Yet another striking thing was that nobody during the Moscow meeting or at commenting its results afterwards even mentioned the question of the forthcoming referendum in Transnistria. One can be sure that in his dialog with Putin, Voronin touched on this painful question, but apparently did not find Putin’s understanding. Therefore, at the news conference in Chisinau Vladimir Voronin preferred to not speak about the referendum. Fortunately for him, that day the Presidential Office was free of journalists capable to ask sudden, unconcerted questions.

Meanwhile, the Transnistrian referendum topic is going to remain dominating until the beginning of a new political season here, and the referendum may become that ‘litmus paper’ which will show what the real results of the Moscow meeting were.

If Tiraspol cancels the referendum on Moscow’s advice under a decent pretext, this will be a real result. Such an incredible scenario would testify to the availability of real accords with Vladimir Putin – accords permitting to count on Transnistrian conflict settlement.

If Russia keeps on behaving the way it has been doing last months, if it delegates, officially or not, its observers to Transnistria and speaks about the Transnistrian people’s right to choose their own destiny, if it takes into account the region’s wish to become part of Russia, then this variant will imply that one should not count on having the Transnistria problem solved – at least with the present-day authorities in Chisinau, Tiraspol and Moscow.

If nothing changes cardinally, this will be a result, too. This will mean that everything is going as usual, that sooner or later Moscow will slacken its presently stiff ban on the imports of wines from Moldova, that Chisinau will not remain the last obstacle to Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, and that Moldova will have to pay a new, higher rate on Russian natural gas supplied here.

As for the Transnistrian settlement, it will continue to be a slack, dull political process. And this, in turn, will mean that the chief result of the Moscow meeting was the fact that the meeting did take place as such, not to mention, certainly, that it gave analysts so much food for thought. // Infotag