Weekly Roundup

February 6th - February 13th

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!

Regional Tensions - Ukraine Crisis

Once again we find ourselves in the same strange place regarding the buildup to war in Ukraine. Day by day the news gets more dire, and day in and day out almost zero notice is taken in Moldova. 

As anyone following the American or European press will know, tensions ratcheted up further this week as diplomatic efforts stalled and Russian forces began leaving their staging areas and positioning right on the Ukrainian border along likely lines of advance. Friday night US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan briefed reporters that US intelligence believes that a full scale invasion may be launched in the next few days. In additional comments Saturday he said: 

“If a Russian attack on Ukraine proceeds, it is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality. A subsequent ground invasion would involve the onslaught of a massive force.”

Saturday morning the US Embassy in Kyiv was ordered to evacuate with all staff leaving by the end of the day. Most staffers are being sent back to the US but a core team will set up a temporary embassy facility in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. At the same time US citizens living in Ukraine began receiving urgent calls from consular services asking them to leave now and plan their departure by land as flights are beginning to be canceled. Poland has waived COVID related bureaucratic processes for Americans leaving Ukraine to the west. Meanwhile, President Biden has deployed an additional 3000 US troops from the 82nd Airborne to Poland in order to set up refugee centers to assist Americans fleeing west. As of Sunday the US Embassy in Kyiv is empty except of it’s Marine guards who are taking “appropriate, prudent steps” to “reduce those holdings” and ``certain equipment.” (aka burning documents). Australia has followed the US evacuation plans while the EU Delegation, UK, French and German Embassy are staying with reduced staffing. Currently 38 countries have urged their citizens to evacuate Ukraine in advance of an imminent invasion. 

**Correction: the original version of this article incorrectly stated that at the time of writing the UK and Canadian Embassies had also begun evacuations. This has been updated in the paragraph above.

Last minute diplomacy is said to be ongoing, but it seems that the primary attempt to prevent the outbreak of war right now is the ongoing blitz declassification of US intelligence. Observers have continuously predicted that Vladimir Putin intends to stage a false-flag attack on his own troops or civilians in order to announce a casus belli. Intelligence is being released to make it hard for Putin to frame himself as the victim of Ukrainian aggression. This weekend, Der Spiegel reported that US intelligence and Pentagon estimates have been shared widely with NATO allies that the attack is likely to be launched Wednesday February 16th.  

In an example of what seems to be the stoic resolve that has set in in Ukraine, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant General Valerii Zaluzhnyi made the following statement this weekend: 

“We have strengthened Kiev's defense. We went through war and received adequate training. Therefore, they are prepared to receive their enemies not with flowers, but with Stingers, Javelin and NLAW missiles. Welcome to hell!"

Taken together, all this news represents the largest diplomatic and military scare between NATO and Russia since the Cuban Missile Crisis. With countries as far away as Portugal and Canada sending military assets to reinforce NATO allies and sending aid to Ukraine you would think that Moldova, a country adjacent to Ukraine and with Russian troops stationed within 30 kilometers of Chisinau would be on edge.

Moldovan Reaction Remains… Muted

While reporting in the western press has occasionally noticed Moldova there has been almost nothing written about Moldova even in passing. A perfect example is this map published by NBC news purporting to show intelligence about potential invasion routes. 

As you can see, the map shows “A route to create a land bridge to Moldova” as a next step after taking Odessa. However, the article itself literally never mentions Moldova outside of this graphic and makes absolutely no effort to explain why they are predicting the invasion of another sovereign country. Whether this is lazy reporting or not (it is), the article demonstrates a pattern largely followed by the Moldovan press as well. 

In terms of official responses, Moldova’s Minister of Foriegn Affairs called his Ukrainian counterpart to express “mutual support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine within our internationally recognized borders remains unwavering." Meanwhile the Ministry announced that the Moldovan Embassy in Kyiv is “monitoring the situation” and has an action plan for any "alarming developments." They have set up a round the clock hotline for Moldovans in Ukraine to call for help (number : +38 068 384 2016) and have encouraged citizens to monitor the news. 

A notable exception to the guarded statements and official silence was a facebook post by PAS MP Dumitru Alaiba this week. The statement is worth printing in full because of its content and because it sits in such stark contrast to official silence on the issue. 

A war could break out a few hundred miles from our border. I still hope and believe that it will never happen. I hope and believe this black scenario will be avoided.

The whole continent is worried, the whole world really, and we in Moldova somehow try to look elsewhere. Because, let's admit it, we're afraid of this nightmare. Because we could be next. By coincidence, in this hybrid threat, as much as the neighboring state is militarily threatened, we are threatened with gas prices. Sort of "we got our own problems' ' It's just a coincidence. Or not . I think not . But it's just an opinion.

Ukraine is an independent, sovereign and indivisible state. No one but the Ukrainian people can decide their fate. The stability of Ukraine is a good guarantee for the stability of the Republic of Moldova. I don't want to imagine a war on the border of our country. Ukraine has suffered a lot in the last almost 10 years. People have suffered enough. Thousands have already lost their lives. Thousands of children have already become orphans. Thousands of mothers are already complaining about their sons. And the daughters Tens of thousands of refugees have already left their homes fleeing war. I don't want to imagine that these last few years since the occupation of Crimea have been just a preamble. Enough!

With all the problems they are facing, Ukraine is free and must remain free. I hope and believe that reason will prevail.

Слава Україні! Glory to Ukraine!

When attempting to analyze this silence it is totally understandable that the Moldovan government is walking a tightrope here. They are not ignorant of what is going on but are being constantly pressured and even blackmailed by Russia over the supply of natural gas and heating during the winter months. At the same time, this strategy of silence has its own risks as people are completely unprepared for what is potentially coming in the next week. With very little press coverage and strategic silence from the government, Moldovans are in the dark. 

A perfect encapsulation of this fact lies in a poll that was released by a major think tank this week and reported on by most major outlets. In this poll Moldovans were asked “what worries them most in 2022.” It isn’t clear from the reporting whether this was asked as an open or closed question (aka open response or multiple choice). Either way, the response was striking. 73.8% of respondents worried about rising prices, 60.5% about low salaries, 28.9% about not enough jobs, 15.7% about corruption. There were smaller answers including 0.5% being worried about natural disasters including “floods and landslides.”

Either “war in Ukraine” was never an option in the poll or no one answered it in an open question. Further, no outlets who reported on this poll indicated that it might be odd not to mention Ukraine in a poll conducted in the last 2 weeks. 

Collectively, Moldova and Moldovans have very little awareness of a crisis that could result in exploding food prices, economic uncertainty and a security crisis very very close to home. 

After weeks of writing about this in Moldova Matters I begin to feel like a person screaming “Look Up!!” into the void… 

Political Updates

This week, the primary focus of the Moldovan political press was on a joint government meeting held between Romania and Moldova in Chisinau on Friday. This meeting was the result of increasing cooperation and planning between the Moldovan and Romanian government and resulted in 13 bilateral accords being signed. A few highlights of the agreements are as follows:

• A grant from Romania to Moldova of 100 million euros for rural development projects including roads, water systems, school renovation and more

• Construction of a new bridge over the river Prut connecting Ungheni to Romania. The bridge will be funded by the Romanian government and construction should take 3 years

• Renovation of a bridge over the Prut near the Romanian city of Galati

• A Memorandum of Understanding on energy cooperation to be followed by a joint action plan in the next 6 months

• A collaboration plan between the Ministries of Education to deepen cooperation to modernize the Moldovan school system and exchange experienced Romanian teachers in specialty university fields to support Moldovan universities. 

• A 10 year military cooperation agreement on officer training programs

• The steep reduction of roaming fees between the countries. Incoming calls to Moldovan numbers in Romania will have no charge while calls between countries will get 10x cheaper and data roaming 5x cheaper. 

Prime Minister Gavrilita noted that they are building on the longstanding community of "language, culture and history" and adding concrete projects to "build bridges both physical and virtual” between the countries. President Sandu thanked Romania for their support of Moldova and particularly highlighted infrastructure projects, cultural and educational projects and the 100 million euro grant. 

This flurry of actions represents a major win for the Gavrilita government and a rare sign of positive momentum in a time of rolling crises. 

Gas Crisis

This week the European Union announced that it is allocating 5 million euros to support low income families in Moldova during the cold season. This will primarily come in the form of one time financial assistance to qualifying families as well as deliveries of firewood and fuel to those not connected to gas. While we talk about the gas crisis constantly, it’s important to remember that it is really an energy crisis more broadly with costs accelerating across the economy. Many Moldovans heat their homes with firewood in traditional stoves and they have also seen prices increase substantially through this winter. 

COVID-19 Updates

This week we are seeing clear indications that the Omicron wave in Moldova is beginning to subside. The 7 day rolling average stands at 2658 new cases and 24 deaths per day. As you can see in the charts below this represents a major fall in new cases from the peak a few weeks ago but an increase in deaths. Since deaths are generally an indicator that lags by 2 weeks we are likely to see a decrease in daily deaths by the end of next week. 

Vaccination Updates

New data released this week continues to show that Moldova has stalled out at around 30% of the population fully vaccinated. Of this group around 180,000 persons have received a booster shot. These numbers do not include those who got vaccinated in Romania which means that the overall number could be closer to 40% total vaccination rate though this is speculative. 

In the past week, 94 criminal cases were opened due to investigations of fraud regarding fake vaccine certificates. Of those, 22 are medical workers and the rest are people who sought or received fake certificates. It seems that most of the certificates in this particular criminal enterprise were being issued to people outside Moldova. 

Economic News

This week there was a rather strange story from the National Bank. The board of the bank was set to meet on February 8th and issue a decision about interest rates. PAS MP Radu Marin preempted the meeting by announcing that he had information that they planned on increasing the base rate 2% from 8.5% to 10.5%. The MP criticized this policy as dangerous to the economy arguing that a rate increase will hurt companies while doing little to impact inflation which is being driven by international factors outside of Moldova’s control. The National Bank canceled its meeting pending an internal investigation into who was responsible for leaking their plans. They have not announced a followup meeting to take a decision on interest rates. It’s worth noting that this would be the second rate increase this year. In January the national bank hiked the base rate from 6.5% to 8.5% already as a response to inflation. 

Ending on a High Note!

This week, the high note has to be the major set of bilateral accords between Moldova and Romania concluded on Friday. While the headlines were mostly about the construction and renovation of bridges and the 100 million euro grant, there was a lot more there as well. The proposals around supporting Moldova’s education system are very exciting. Moldova has very few university to university partnerships and an aging and highly entrenched leadership in higher education. Bringing in rotations of Romanian teachers to modernize key subjects and government level assistance on reform is really important. Further, the reduction of roaming costs between Moldova and Romania reduces friction in business and pleasure travel between the countries. Taken together, these accords represent major actions that will have a long term positive impact for people across Moldova. In this year of rolling crises it’s nice to see Moldova get a major win for a change!

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