Weekly Roundup

January 1 - 7

Welcome back to Moldova Matters! In this weekly roundup we will check in with the top stories of the week in Politics and Economics. Subscribe to Moldova Matters to get our Weekly Roundup and other content sent right to your email! And consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work at Moldova matters. For just $5 / month, the price of a nice coffee, you can support this work and help us expand into even better content!

Happy Holidays!! (and there are oh so many!)

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!! In the last week we have had both holidays in Moldova (Christmas being today by the Julian Calendar) so we’ll start with our new year of Weekly Roundups with how the holidays were celebrated. 

President Sandu today congratulated Moldovans on the Christmas holiday and wished everyone a good time with their families. She noted however the importance of maintaining proper COVID precautions are people continued the holiday period of meeting and celebrating in family grounds. In Moldova, Christmas is celebrated on January 7th according to the Julian Calendar used by most Eastern Orthodox churches. Since there are also many in Moldova that celebrate Christmas according to the Gregorian Calendar on December 25th we sometimes call this second Christmas. There is also a New Year according to the old calendar so the holidays here are just getting rolling!

Last week, in the Presidential New Years address Maia Sandu discussed 2021 and looked ahead to 2022. Talking about the past year the President noted that 2021 was a very challenging year but a good one. Citizens began the process of ridding the country of a generation of corrupt politicians and decisively directed the government to reform. She noted that the new government had many successes including bringing Moldova out of international isolation and creating good relations with neighbors, especially Romania and Ukraine. The President spoke about how the fight against corruption is underway but moving slower than planned. She said that there have been many challenges but that law enforcement is working and there will be many more actions in 2022. She stressed the critical nature of judicial reform in the year to come. Speaking of the direction of action in 2022 the President said “The greatest wealth of a country is its people. The Republic of Moldova should take care of its citizens, invest in people. We must prepare future generations to adapt to a changing world.” 

Indeed there were many challenges in the past year as well as successes. With this first Weekly Roundup in 2022 we begin the process of watching just how this will unfold this year!

Political Updates

The holidays are a very very slow period in terms of political news in Moldova. That said, over the past few weeks there are a few stories we should highlight and keep an eye on as the country emerges from the period of never ending celebrations and gets back to work. 

Socialist Party Reforms

As expected, the Socialists party reformed it’s leadership and removed the position of Chairmen of the Party. Now the party will be run by an executive committee rather than a single person (a kind of “Politburo” if you will). Mr. Dodon stepped down as Party Chairmen with these changes but immediately was appointed “Honorary Chairman.” 

So does this matter? Hard to know. The Executive Committee and Executive Secretary who will lead the committee have yet to be appointed. So far Mr. Dodon simply added an “Honorary” to his title. We’ll have to keep an eye on things to see if this is a real leadership reshuffle or merely a semantic change. 

A Conflict of Interest… in the Constitutional Crisis?

The National Integrity Agency, ANI, which is responsible for reporting conflicts of interest and illegal wealth of politicians, came out with a very strange statement this past week. They accused Domnica Manole, President of the Constitutional Court, of a conflict of interest regarding her rulings during the Constitutional Crisis last spring. Recall, in order to hang on to power the Socialist, Shor and Democratic Parties in Parliament attempted many different actions in order to prevent new elections. One of them was for Parliament to dismiss Judge Manole and replace her with a Socialist party loyalist - effectively an attack on the independence of the judiciary by the legislature. Briefly there were two people claiming to be President of the Constitutional Court and President Sandu gave a very grave press conference asking the police and military not to obey illegal orders - a rather tense moment. The Constitutional Court naturally ruled this attack on it’s independence unconstitutional and eventually the Socialists backed down. Well, the ANI has now determined that Judge Manole’s ruling in defense of the court was a conflict of interest because she is on the court. The ANI noted that she did not file the right paperwork noting this conflict and then recuse herself. 

Effectively, the ANI is stating that the Constitutional Court can’t rule on coups against the court’s power because the coup involves the court itself. It’s not clear what prompted this pretzel logic from the ANI or what exactly the agency plans to do about it. President Sandu has said that this statement is absolutely wrong and possibly even illegal. So what does this mean? That’s not really clear as the ANI can’t exactly remove a judge from the Constitutional Court, and is likely to lose in court if they try… I guess proving it’s point? Kinda? 

All we can say for sure is that the ANI, which is responsible for removing officials at all levels of government if they are corrupt, has spent a lot of time on something that is really really strange. Thankfully Moldova is not known to have any corrupt officials that they could actually be spending time on…. right?

Judicial Reform Hits Another Snag

Meanwhile, attempts by the government to reform the judiciary faced a rather public setback this week when an appeals court reinstated Judge Klima as the head of the Chisinau appeals court. Klima was appointed to this position by President Dodon and his appointment was revoked by President Sandu last year. Judge Klima was the one responsible for canceling the Chisinau mayoral election and depriving Andrei Nastasse of his mandate when the election went against Mr. Plahotnuic’s chosen candidates. He is suspected of further corruption as well but nothing has yet been proven. This action by the court to protect one of its own, no matter how notorious, shows just how hard judicial reform is for the government and how unwilling the courts can be to hold their own to account. We can expect judicial reform to be a major focus in the coming year. 

RISE Investigation - Moldovan Mercenaries

RISE, Moldova’s premier investigative journalist outlet, has released a major investigation showing 9 Moldovans serving as mercenaries with the Wagner Group. Wagner is a mercenary company believed to be owned by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin and used by the Kremlin as a deniable alternative to deploying regular Russian troops in conflicts around the world. The outfit does not have a great reputation and has been accused of multiple war crimes associated with its actions in Donbas, Syria and in various conflicts in Africa. As a fun aside, the founder of the company, Dmitry Utkin, named it “Wagner” in honor of Hitler’s favorite composer. Mr. Utkin is a bit of a Nazi and has a variety of 3rd Reich tattoos to prove it. 

With that background in place, what RISE reported on was an apparent leak of a database of Wagner mercenaries’ identities and status (including when and where they died). In it RISE found 9 Moldovans serving, or having served with the mercenary group. Four of the 9 mercenaries were killed in the Battle of Khasham in Syria in 2017. Recall, this battle was one where around 500 Syrian Army troops, including many Wagner mercenaries, attacked a US Army and Syrian Democratic Forces outpost. Videos showed the attacking Russian (and Moldovan) mercenaries were well aware they were attacking a US post staffed by only around 30 - 50 US soldiers. The attackers attempted to overwhelm the position with tanks and artillery but were beaten back by US airpower. RISE cites Pentagon reports of 200-300 dead attackers and found that 81 Wagner mercenaries including 4 Moldovans were killed in the battle. The US and its allies suffered no losses. 

The RISE investigation also showed that one of the mercenaries killed in this battle was one of the Wagner mercenaries who filmed and published a video of the execution and torture of a Syrian army deserter around the same time. In the video, 4 men slowly kill a man with a sledgehammer as a warning to other deserters. There are currently 5 Moldovans working for Wagner. Asked for comment, Moldova’s Security and Information Service SIS, noted that they were aware and are tracking many more Moldovan mercenaries as well. The whole investigation is fascinating and worth a read for anyone who wants to dig deeper. 

Regional Tensions - Kazakhstan Explodes

This week, Kazakhstan was roiled by protests that began with a proposed hike on gas by the government. These protests quickly turned into something entirely different with all regions and almost all cities in the country exploding in violence within days. The Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev initially responded by reducing gas prices and sacking the Prime Minister and other officials. President Tokayev has long been viewed as a sort of front man or puppet for past President Nursultan Nazarbayev who ruled Kazakhstan as president from 1990 to 2019 and continues to effectively rule in a new position called “Father of the Nation” and leader of the security council. President Tokayev removed Nazarbayev from his position on the security council and apparently removed allies of the former president across government. 

Meanwhile, the protests further spiraled into violence with with protestors seizing the airport in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, and causing huge damage. The mayor’s office in Almaty was burned down along with many other government buildings across the country. Protestors have seized some police and security service buildings and apparently gained access to small arms. 

President Tokayev has declared a state of emergency across the whole country and disconnected the internet making it very hard to know what is going on. Tokayev has said in a press conference that the “government will not fall” and has authorized police and military to “shoot without warning” and waived civil liberties allowing the police unrestricted wiretaps, access to private property and arbitrary detention. Troops have been filmed firing at protestors in Almaty. Meanwhile, there are reports of some military and police units going over to the protestors and a mass exodus of private jets from Kazakhstan. Presumably much of the kleptocratic elite are fleeing the country. 

President Tokayev invoked Article 4 of the CSTO collective security alliance between Kazakhstan, Russia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, asking for foriegn troops to enter the country and help contain the protests (or revolution). Russia responded swiftly and Russian and Belarussian airborne troops are already on the ground securing key installations such as Russia’s spaceport the Baikonur Cosmodrome. 

This is only the briefest summary of what is going on and the situation is evolving extremely quickly and remains unclear. At least 20 people have been killed so far including one police officer who was decapitated, but we can assume these numbers will increase dramatically as more information becomes available. 

Personally, I served in Kazakhstan as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 2011 before coming to Moldova and have to say the news is extremely concerning. Friends in country who have managed to get messages out say there are runs on banks and no money to be found. Protests are everywhere and people are very frightened. 

So How does this Affect Moldova?

Firstly, Moldova’s Ministry of Foriegn Affairs has told citizens not to travel to Kazakhstan and instructed any Moldovans there to shelter in place and contact the Moldvan Embassy in Moscow if they need help (Moldova has no Embassy in Kazakhstan). Overall, commentary in the Moldovan press notes that Kazakhstan may not be physically close to Moldova but it can have a huge impact on regional security. With a massive Russian buildup in Ukraine threatening invasion of Moldova’s neighbor and now Russian troops in Kazakhstan it’s hard not to look for some connections. 

Journalist, and friend of Moldova Matters, Casey Michel has written about the possibility of this unrest resulting in the annexation of parts of northern Kazakhstan by Russia. There are many similarities to the situation in the Donbas, Abkhazia, Crimea and Transnistria where Russia intervened to carve off a largely ethnically Russian part of another country. If you’re interested in more please read the whole article linked above. Even in this most extreme scenario though the situation in Kazakhstan is likely to have a more political than military dynamic for Russia which is only deploying a small number of troops there (around 3000). This will not impact Russia’s plans for Ukraine in that sense. 

In a bigger sense, and one that has implications for Ukraine, the commentary coming from Russia is following a predictable pattern. Uprisings are 100% fabricated by “external actors,” by which they mean to implicate a CIA or MI6 plot as the driving factor rather than local grievance. The President of Serbia is already parroting this line saying that “external forces” want to do the same thing to Serbia as is happening in Kazakhstan. The point of this is to note that rather than distracting Russia from it’s intentions in Ukraine this is more likely to make the Kremlin feel it is being attacked on multiple fronts - something that makes the security situation in Europe even more unpredictable.

COVID-19 Update

There has been little in the way of new COVID-19 news in the past few weeks. Cases have stayed relatively flat as have daily deaths and currently there is no proof of Omicron beginning it’s spread in Moldova. Unfortunately, Moldova’s official COVID-19 portal stopped updating on December 31st. Worse, on that day it reported 585 deaths in a single day up from a 7 day average of just 16 deaths a day as of December 30th. I think we can conclude this is some kind of bizarre error (some months ago there was a similar error where the overall death count went down implying some manner of resurrection had happened - this error is still not corrected or explained). If this is not updated by next week we will try and find a new mechanism of tracking the official numbers from Moldova. Until then, things are relatively quiet as Moldova waits for Omicron to hit. 

Economic News

In the past weeks, the biggest economic news in Moldova was about projections for salaries and inflation in 2022. The government announced that it is projecting the “average salary” in Moldova to jump from 8716 lei / month in 2021 to 9,900 lei / month in 2022, an increase of around 15.4%. This is a massive jump in one year and even more massive if you consider that only a few years ago the average salary was just 5,600 lei / month. On one hand this looks like good news but that is not really the case when inflation is taken into account. Experts are projecting that the final inflation figures for 2021 will amount to 14-15% inflation with much higher inflation in some categories such as food. Because of this wage increases will be completely eaten by inflation and most people will wind up with less money in their pockets not more. This is even worse when different income brackets are taken into account as the majority of the wage increases went to the top 10% of paid workers with the lowest paid workers seeing much smaller gains. As with everywhere in the world inflation is expected to be the major story driving economic news in 2022 with the national bank projecting continued high inflation all through the year. 

Ending on a High Note!

For this week’s high note we look at a story from a few weeks ago about a small Moldovan company who are making the country’s trolleybuses more efficient and environmentally friendly. Engineers from the Moldovan firm started their work on trolleybuses in the year 2000 when an electricity crisis drove Chisinau to challenge local engineers to make the buses more efficient. They found that the old Soviet era buses were lugging around 1.5 tons of analog resistors and components that were both inefficient and super heavy. The company created a set of modern electrical components weighing only 42 kg that was a major energy saver for the city. Now this company supplies trolleybuses in over 120 cities worldwide primarily in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. The electrical pack for the buses is made in a small basement factory in Chisinau and exported all over the region. Furthermore, this company pioneered the field of hybrid trolleybuses in which a battery pack allows the trolleybus to travel around 60-70km on its own power, greatly expanding the range of public transit beyond the overhead lines. Now this company is building a fully electric bus with a 300km range in partnership with a production company in Belarus. 

So three cheers for Moldovan engineering!! We don’t get enough great stories like this but the reality is that there is a huge amount of innovation and hard work going on all around Moldova and the good news frequently gets drowned out by the bad. In 2022 let’s all hope for more feel-good stories that highlight what an amazing country Moldova really is!

And consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work at Moldova matters. For just $5 / month, the price of a nice coffee, you can support this work and help us expand into even better content!