Wedged between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova, for the first time since its independence, is being led by a pro-European prime minister
With the smoking evidence of attacks on Ukraine visible from her country’s borders, Moldova’s Prime Minister, Natalia Gavrilita, is vowing to speed the former Soviet state’s push toward Europe in the face of increasingly hostile threats from Moscow.
Moldova is a landlocked crescent of hills and vineyards half the size of New Brunswick, wedged between Romania and Ukraine. It is best known for its wine, its monasteries and a history of systemic corruption that has left it one of Europe’s poorest places. “The war in Ukraine has changed the security environment in Europe,” said Iulian Groza, the former deputy foreign minister of Moldova, who now leads the Institute of European Policies and Reforms. Russia’s instigation of war has suddenly made clear that “it’s much better to provide economic and political support by accepting us to Europe than to provide military equipment now to defend Ukraine,” he said.
A short drive from the Prime Minister’s offices, the road east from the capital city of Chisinau passes an outpost with a tank and soldiers in blue peacekeeping helmets. Ahead, past a Georgi Carpi built a house with a view onto a hill where those forces fired rockets into Moldova 30 years ago. Now 74, he remembers telling anyone who would listen, “Don’t mess with the Russians. Leave the Russians alone,” he said on Feb. 27.For most of the past three decades, Moldova has done exactly that. That hill has remained under the control of Transnistria, where thousands of Russian troops remain stationed today.