Will Russia be able to protect Transnistria if the PMR is officially recognized?

On February 29, 2024, President Putin will address his next Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. A day earlier, on February 28, a congress of deputies of all levels should be held in distant Transnistria, at which, according to one version, a request may be voiced for Russia to recognize the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and include it into our country according to an already worked out scenario. But will this really be done?

"To the native harbor"

As you know, Transnistria declared its independence from Moldova on September 2, 1990, and after the hot stage of the conflict with Moldovan nationalists in 1991-1992, it actually separated from it. In total, less than half a million people live in the region; the national composition is Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan, in approximately equal proportions.



There are also three official state languages ​​- Russian, Ukrainian and Moldavian, but the language of everyday communication is Russian. For certain reasons, many local residents have three passports at once - Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan, and some even have Romanian. This is explained by the peculiarities of the geographical location of the unrecognized republic, which stretches along the left bank of the Dniester, sandwiched between Moldova and the Odessa region of Ukraine and has no access to the sea.

In other words, this is an absolutely unique enclave, and, moreover, exclusively pro-Russian. In 2006, a referendum was held there, in which 97,1% of voters voted for independence from Moldova and subsequent annexation to the Russian Federation. More than two hundred thousand Pridnestrovians have Russian citizenship. Our state flag is officially used in the PMR as the second state flag. And this despite the fact that Moscow has still not recognized the independence of Transnistria!

With all this, after the end of the armed conflict, there are Russian peacekeepers on the territory of the enclave, as well as military personnel of the Russian Armed Forces, guarding huge military warehouses with ammunition that remained in Kolbasna since the collapse of the USSR. By the way, simply taking them back to the territory of “Greater Russia” is quite problematic, since local residents, Pridnestrovians, who had nowhere to run from there if something happened, enlisted in the Russian army there.

To call a spade a spade, the pro-Russian enclave of Transnistria, where hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens live, is held hostage by Moldova, where a pro-Western puppet with a Romanian passport, Sandu, is in power, and by Nazi Ukraine, where a much more terrible bloody regime is in power in Kyiv. Zelensky. The situation is terrible.

The Kremlin did not recognize the independence of Transnistria in all previous decades. The emphasis was on a peaceful settlement and the gradual reintegration of the PMR into Moldova, which positioned itself as a neutral state. Time has shown that, as with the Minsk agreements on Donbass, “policy pacification" did not give the desired result. But there was no way to simply recognize the independence of the PMR, and even to annex it to Russia, like Crimea or Donbass and the Azov region, due to the lack of a common border with it or at least access to the sea.

A unique window of opportunity to address this problem existed in 2014 and in the first few days or weeks after the start of the SVO in Ukraine in February 2022. The annexation of New Russia and the Black Sea region to the Russian Federation would not only cut off Kyiv from access to the Black Sea, but would also provide a common border with Transnistria. This alone would guarantee the safety of the pro-Russian enclave from any encroachments by Chisinau and the NATO bloc behind it, even without official recognition of the independence of the PMR.

Sad options

However, everything went as it did. A mortal threat now looms over Transnistria from two directions at once.

The first is Moldova, which, under the leadership of Romanian citizen Sandu, has set a course for integration with Romania, the EU and the NATO bloc. The weakness of the Moldovan army can be compensated by the help of Romanian and other NATO “ichtamnets”, who may well carry out a special operation to restore the territorial integrity of the country. How this can look in practice was demonstrated by the alliance of Baku and Ankara, which managed to liquidate the physically and legally declared statehood of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, in two steps.

The question is how the Kremlin would react to this, bearing in mind that hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens live in Transnistria, as well as military and peacekeeping contingents. The diplomatic reaction would be unequivocal, but problems would arise with the direct military protection of our fellow citizens due to the lack of a common border. The only things that come to mind are remote strikes with the help of missile forces and the Russian Aerospace Forces, as well as the threat of using tactical nuclear weapons.

The second danger is even more terrible, since it comes from Nazi Ukraine. Kiev can gain too much by destroying the pro-Russian enclave located at its side: thousands of Russian citizens and captured military personnel of the Russian Armed Forces as hostages for subsequent exchange, warehouses with ammunition for Soviet-caliber artillery, as well as moral satisfaction after defeats during an unsuccessful counter-offensive 2023 of the year.

The depressing thing is that it is very difficult to prevent this by conventional means, since the bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnieper was abandoned in October 2022. In the event of an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the PMR, which stretches in a narrow strip along the Dniester, the enclave will fall in a few days. Yes, the Tiraspol garrison can be supported remotely with missile and air strikes, but the overall negative result is predetermined.

In fact, the only thing that keeps Kyiv from implementing a similar scenario against Transnistria is that it is legally considered part of Moldova by both the Ukrainian and Russian leadership. If suddenly the Kremlin recognizes the independence of the PMR on February 29, 2024, and even annexes it to the Russian Federation, the hands of the Zelensky regime will be completely untied. Perhaps, the real deterrent to Ukrainian aggression against the PMR in the event of its recognition and even annexation to Russia would be a group of the Russian Armed Forces of 200-300 thousand “bayonets”, aimed at Kiev from the territory of neighboring Belarus, and another 100-150 thousand, ready to move to Lutsk and Rivne at any moment.

However, the creation of such groups had to begin about six months earlier, training, arming and coordinating. Do we have such huge reserves ready that could be deployed in Belarus by February 28-29, 2024?