The Moldovan Deputy Premier, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration Andrei Stratan is paying a visit to the Russian capital today. These hours, he is holding meetings with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, Chairman of the Russian State Duma Standing Committee for International Affairs Constantin Kosachev, and other officials.
The sides are discussing development of the Moldo-Russian political dialog, situation around the Transnistrian conflict settlement, other issues.
The influential Kommersant newspaper of Moscow wrote in this connection today the visit is taking place against the background of the warming relations between the two states, which it believes means "a new spiral of friendship".
At the same time, Kommersant pointed out a noticeable cooling taking place between the Kremlin and Tiraspol: "Moscow is tired of tolerating Igor Smirnov's consumer moods, and is indignant that the Transnistrian leader would categorically not wish to build relations with Chisinau - even on the confederation basis in a combination with a Russia-guaranteed special status for the region, and that he would keep on dreaming about Transnistria's accession to the Russian Federation in analogy with the Kaliningrad oblast [region]. All this has lately led to such a degree of irritation that the Smolensk Square [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] and the Security Council are even beginning to ponder that, perhaps, time has come to look for a replacement to the Transnistrian president".
Kommersant further held that, so far, Russia is using economic levers against the rebel Transnistrian leader, having frosted "the financial assistance, which we used to monthly pump into the unrecognized republic since last year".
"Indeed we have pinched him! It is really too easy to live and set oneself an unlimited budget with a deficit of US$100 million, when you know there exist voluntary donors. Russia cannot be an eternal donor. If you feel hard, you should be more economical. They thought that every gap in their budget would be mended by Moscow. Well, we ourselves have quite many such deficient regions in Russia", Kommersant quoted an official from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The publication wrote that the tough pressing is already working, and Tiraspol is racking brains over how to close holes in the budget: "They are urgently frosting social programs and financing of the education sector... All this is not indeed adding popularity to Smirnov, who is now extremely concerned over the cooling of relations with Moscow. Yet Moscow is not going to ease its grip until Mr. Smirnov has changed his mind. Now that relations with Georgia are in a complete disorder, the Transnistrian region remains the only conflict zone in the FSU area where Russia is still able to play the role of an efficient peacekeeper. If Moscow's plan works off, Vladimir Putin will get a chance to demonstrate to the West that Russia is able to act not only as a buffer between conflicting sides but even to reconcile them. For this, it is possible to even sacrifice such a politician as Igor Smirnov".
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