Moldova spooked by general’s comments
On Friday, Rustam Minnekaev, the acting commander of Russia’s Central Military District, said that the Russian army would try to take full control over both eastern and southern Ukraine.
That is a worrying expansion from the current thinking behind Russian military goals which suggest Moscow could be sated by taking the eastern Donbas region and establishing a land corridor from there to Crimea which it illegally annexed in 2014.
Under that scenario Ukraine’s south west coast and the strategic city of Odessa would remain out of Moscow’s clutches.
But Minnekaev said Putin’s real aims expanded further than that and took in all of Ukraine’s coastline – and beyond.“Control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria, where there are cases of Russian-speaking people being oppressed,” he said.
Transnistria, also known as Pridnestrovia, is a small breakaway region in the former Soviet republic of Moldova where pro-Russian separatists have been armed and backed by Moscow.
It bears similarities to the Russian speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s east which broke away from Kyiv in 2014.
Moldova denies Russia speakers are being oppressed. It’s a common claim Russia uses to justify military action on post Soviet states. News.com
