The second and most important point of the Kremlin’s hidden agenda is the incorporation of Ukraine into the Eurasian Union. For the Kremlin the Eurasian Union is a new instrument to bring Ukraine back into its orbit.[38] This is also the reason that the Kremlin has a great interest in attracting Moldova, which, in March 2012, was promised lower consumer prices (of up to 30 percent) for gas and oil, and a “big market (comparable with the EU) for Moldovan products.” It was also offered more beneficial conditions for Moldavan workers in countries of the Customs Union if it would adhere to the Customs Union, which functions as the entrance to the Eurasian Union.[39] Moldova’s membership of the Eurasian Union would, in fact, see Ukraine encircled by three member states of the Eurasian Union: Russia, Belarus, and Moldova, thereby making Ukraine’s membership of this organization more logical and an eventual future membership of Ukraine of the EU more problematic. The Kremlin’s Moldova policy is, therefore, an integral part of its Eurasian Union project. There seems to exist a clear will in the Kremlin—in case the Moldovan leadership cannot be convinced to join the Eurasian Union and is opting instead for EU membership—to split the country and make the breakaway province of Transnistria independent along the lines of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On July 31, 2012, speaking in the Nashi Seliger camp, Putin said that Transnistria is entitled to self-determination. This “reference to self-determination is a novel one in Moscow’s rhetoric about the Transnistria conflict,” warned Vladimir Socor.[40] Putin’s declaration was followed by the reappointment on August 2, 2012, of deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin to the additional post of special representative of the Russian President for Transnistria (Rogozin had already been appointed in March 2012 to this post by Putin’s predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev). On the same day, Rogozin received Transnistria’s leader Yevgeny Shevchuk in Moscow. When Rogozin and Shevchuk made a declaration after the meeting, Russia’s flag and Transnistria’s “state flag” were displayed on an equal footing—a clear sign of Russian support for Transnistrian separatism. “Moscow’s July 31 and August 2 statements,” wrote Vladimir Socor, “add further elements of de-recognition [of Moldova’s territorial integrity], firming up suggestions for Transnistria’s ‘self-determination’ and acknowledging its ‘state’ attributes (territory, flag).”[41] Moscow’s support for Transnistrian separatism is directly linked with the Kremlin’s Eurasian project. “Moscow declared its intention to build a ‘Eurasian economic region’ in Transnistria aiming to prevent the weakening of Moscow’s control over Tiraspol, in a direct response to EU and Moldova’s efforts to attract Transnistria through economic cooperation.”[42]
Notes
1.
Vladimir Putin, “Novyy integratsionnyy proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsya
segodnya,”
2.
“Professor Igor Panarin: Gosudarem postsovetskogo prostranstva stanet Vladimir Putin,”
3.
On Panarin’s grandiose visions see also Marcel H. Van Herpen,
4.
Igor Panarin, “The Information War against Russia: Operation Putin. Part 1. Eurasian Integration: A Pathway Out of the World Crisis.” Lecture in the International Conference Securing Mankind’s Future (February 25–26, 2012), organized in Berlin by the Schiller-Institut. http://www.schiller-institut.de/seiten/201202-berlin/panarin-english.html (accessed June 28, 2013).
5.
Panarin, “The Information War against Russia: Operation Putin.”
6.
