Home News Ukraine redux? Why Moldovans fear being Putin’s next target.

Ukraine redux? Why Moldovans fear being Putin’s next target.

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Moldova, a small pro-Western nation of just 2.5 million people, is worried. That’s because the country stretches along Ukraine’s western flank, and the fear is that Russian President Vladimir Putin might decide to capture it, if he can.

If he did so decide, there would not be much Moldova could do about it. “We are not a very big country, and we do not have a very well endowed army,” Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu acknowledged the other day.

Why We Wrote This

Does Vladimir Putin have Moldova in his sights? The tiny pro-Western country bordering Ukraine is afraid so, and has no way of defending itself.

Just like Ukraine, Moldova is not a member of either the European Union or NATO, so could not expect much help from those directions. Adding to its vulnerability is the fact that pro-Moscow separatists, supported by Russian troops, have long controlled a strip of Moldovan territory along the Ukrainian border that they call Transnistria, though no country in the world has recognized it.

A stream of Western leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has visited Moldova in recent weeks to show support and try to ward off any Russian attack. Can cash and kind words stop the Russian army?

Chisinau, Moldova

The foreign minister of Moldova, a country of 2.5 million people on the western flank of Ukraine, does not mince his words. The Moldovan army, he admits, is small and ill-equipped.

“We are not a very big country and we do not have a very well-endowed army with sophisticated equipment,” Nicu Popescu said in a recent briefing in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau, a city of hulking Soviet-era government buildings, broad boulevards, and snow.

He was responding to questions about whether this small nation, which is squeezed between Ukraine and Romania, might be the next target after Ukraine on Vladimir Putin’s menu.

Why We Wrote This

Does Vladimir Putin have Moldova in his sights? The tiny pro-Western country bordering Ukraine is afraid so, and has no way of defending itself.

There is intense speculation that if Russian forces are able to take the port city of Odessa, in southern Ukraine, they might push westward and cross the border into Moldova.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Russian warships fired missiles at Tuzly, southwest of Odessa on the Black Sea coast, 50 miles from the Moldovan border.

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