Moscow is Still the Master – the complete version of the TOL article

That is a more complete version of the “Moscow is Still the Master” article, published by the Transitions Online recently.

Moscow is Still the Master

A hazy statement designed in the Kremlin exposes the flaws in the conflict-resolution format for Moldova’s separatist territory.

Moldovan presidents have always been notorious for their personal approach to negotiations with Moscow, resulting usually in sound, long-lasting, and humiliating diplomatic defeats. Their Soviet-type leadership style – all three were former high-level apparatchiks – partly explains this foreign policy behavior. Historic feelings of inferiority toward the Kremlin have plagued the Moldovan political class since the country gained independence in 1991.

Eighteen years later, the lame-duck president Vladimir Voronin who is loosing his office after the 5 April parliamentary elections in Moldova, has stepped on the same rake. On 18 March, less than a month before elections won by his Communist Party yesterday, he signed a common declaration with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the secessionist Transdniester leader Igor Smirnov. Quickly tagged

Is Russian TV Channel preparing another disinformation on Moldovan protests?

Today I answered to the questions of “Russia” TV Channel on the recent youth anti-communist protests. Apparently the interview will be imputed into a bigger special edition on Moldovan anti-communist protests to be aired tomorrow evening. There are few curious things about that particular interview – the Russian journalist was too much insistent to get it, when I was not able to meet them yesterday, his colleague sent a crew to meet me today. As I am not the biggest newsmaker in Moldova, and not even the medium-sized one, that persistence has puzzled me.

That is not everything. The Russian journalist was very much eager to film me next to a computer and I was initially even suggested that we go to an Internet cafe for that purpose. As the Moldovan protests were nicknamed by some Western observers “Twitter revolution”, and as the main topic of the interview was supposed to be “the role of Internet on mobilizing the Moldovan protesters”, one may draw the conclusion that “Russian” TV Channel would like to cook another big