by LILY LYNCH
Three and half years ago, the EU suddenly remembered that Moldova exists. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant that overnight, Moldova had become a frontline state. The small country of 2.4 million shares a 759-mile border with Ukraine, and since February 2022 nearly two million have fled across it. Even more concerning was Transnistria, a breakaway region on Moldova’s eastern flank nestled between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border. The unrecognized statelet seceded from Moldova after the collapse of the Soviet Union and remains under de facto Russian control: it hosts an estimated 1,500 Russian troops and half of the population have a Russian passport. With the conflict raging next door, it was feared that the region could become the next flashpoint in Europe’s hot war.
Geopolitics and a wartime state of exception defined last weekend’s parliamentary election. A few days before the vote, Zelenskyy told the UN General Assembly that ‘Europe cannot afford to lose Moldova’. President Maia Sandu declared the election the ‘most consequential’ in her country’s history. EU leaders also emphasized its unprecedented significance. At the end of August, on Moldova’s Independence Day, Macron, Tusk and Merz held an outdoor rally with Sandu in Chisinau. ‘Each and every day Russia attempts to destabilize all of our European countries’, the German chancellor told a sea of young Moldovans. ‘We need Europe to be united in these challenging times’. Tusk and Macron offered up Reaganite platitudes about freedom and prosperity delivered in Romanian, Moldova’s national language. Moldova is new to such attention from Europe’s leading lights. The country is constitutionally neutral so cannot join NATO, but in June 2022, the EU hastily granted it EU candidate status, aiming to send a message of European unity in the face of Russian aggression. Sunday’s parliamentary election was presented to Moldovans and the world at large as nothing less than a battle between the forces of good and evil – a civilizational ultimatum, where the choice was between moving forward into a luminous European future, or backward into Oriental despotism and darkness.
The forces of light were victorious, assisted by a little divine intervention from the state.
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