Episode 5: Transnistria

Welcome back to the Moldova Matters Podcast. Today we have a very special guest. We've got Dr. William H. Hill. He's a global fellow at the Wilson Senate. Dr. Hill was the head of the OSCE, mission to Moldova, between 2003 and 2006. He was also the head of the mission between 1999 and 2001. Dr. Hill authored a book about his time leading the OSCE in Moldova called Russia, the nearer broad in the west, lessons from the Moldova Transnistrian conflict. I can't recommend it enough. Actually, I've misplaced my copy of it, but I read it a few years ago and it does a great deep dive into the history of the negotiations around the Transnistrian settlement, which is one of the main topics we'll cover today. The privilege of meeting Dr. Hill back following the last parliamentary elections in Moldova, where we each were asked by the Wilson Center, where he works. And I was as a guest to write a bit about what those elections meant and did a joint interview with journalist Gil Dorey at the time. So today, we're going to be talking about Transnistria, the war, the history of the kind of conflict and the attempts at the settlement and reunification that have come and gone over the years, as well as where things are now. Before we jump in, I want to highlight a bit that this is this is still quite live history. The war is 30 years on, the scars remain. I'm actually sitting right now in the village of Pochrebia. So I'm actually in the last village before the Transnistrian border would exist. And I put that in air quotes for those listening. So I'm sitting in the security zone. The village has a church here, which was bombed out in part during that war. It still bears the scars of bullet holes and fire. And many of my neighbors here were actually combatants in the war. They they they were they took part in it. And I think it's very telling the way this war is perceived in Moldova versus how sometimes it seemed from outside. In these villages in the security zone, the main street in town is always almost always named Pachy or peace, whereas in much of Moldova, the streets are named Stefan Chamari or after national figures. So the admins this to mention it is a live issue still these days. So I've already talked too much. Dr. Hill, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for agreeing to come on. Thanks, thanks for having me. I'm delighted to do this and delighted to do something else with you. Yeah, fantastic. I'm really excited because I think I think you can provide a lot of perspective for our listeners. And I think that even people who are really plugged in to Moldova either for work or as a passion or even because they live here have misconceptions about the history with Transnistria and kind of how it went. So I want to maybe just start at the beginning and ask what is a kind of silly question because it's such a big one. But why was there a conflict between Moldova and Transnistria at the fall of the Soviet Union? Well, it was part of a general process of nations or peoples that were not Russian who desired to gain independence, not simply from the Soviet Union, not simply anti-communist, but basically to gain regained independence from the Russians. Moldova was a part of Russia, the Russian Empire, for over two centuries. It wasn't just that the Soviets took it at the end of World War II and it was a part of the Soviet Union for 50 years. Independent Moldova disappeared in the 16th century AD, it was ruled first with the Turks. The Russians came there in the 17 and 1800s and were seen for a long time as liberators. But then they annexed in 1812 what's present day Moldova and the Moldovans were part of Russia for a long time. The language which I consider Romanian, there are different in accent, but the language suppressed, the ethnicity was suppressed. People in Moldova missed the process of Romanian state formation, but they were conscious of the different identity that they were not Russians, whether they were Romanians or something special, what's the difference between Germans and Austrians. Moldova was a general desire to break away, but there were also from two centuries, a large number of Russians, Ukrainians, the Gogo-Uz, ethnic Turks who had converted to Eastern Christian Orthodoxy, sometimes in the Middle Ages and fled the Turkish Empire. All of these people looked at Moldova trying to pull away from Russia and the Soviet Union, they feared they were going to join, might join Romania, they wanted to retain their own identity. Moldova, like a number of other states on the periphery of the Soviet Union, tried to split away, and as it split away, parts of Moldova tried to split away from the majority there. It eventually led to two major conflicts, one with the Gogo-Uz and Gogo-Uz, yet didn't break away, but one with Transnistria, a region across the Nistru River that was predominantly Slavic, about 40% Moldovan, but about 25% each Ukrainian and Russian with some Bulgarians and others mixed in. And the conflict actually started before the Soviet Union fell apart. The Transnistria declared its separation from the Moldovan Socialist Republic on September 1, 1990, and declared that it was a separate Soviet Republic, so it didn't declare independence until the Soviet Union fell apart. So the dispute was well underway before the Soviet Union disappeared, and it's just continued for 35 years. Yeah, I think that's really important context, especially going back to how long Moldova had existed within the Russian Empire before. And regarding the war itself, there's a kind of common perception that it was a short bloody, but overall relatively contained conflict that Moldova, I think, I'll tell you the perception of the way I hear it said, which is that Moldova basically was taking the upper hand over Transnistria until the Russian Army intervened. And then the military had been stationed in the Transnistrian region, initially didn't take a side and then did, which resulted in kind of the land swap, I guess, of the strange situation where I am. So I'm sitting in a Moldova, well, Moldova as in controlled by the Kishnaya authorities, village on the Transnistrian side of the Nistru. And the South of me is the city of Bender, or formerly Tugina, which is controlled by the Transnistrian authorities on the Kishnaya side of the Nistru. And basically that this was facilitated by the entry of the Russian Army into the war. Is that basically the correct narrative? Yeah, with some additions. I mean, the two sides started fighting in late 1990 and all through 1991. But at that time, they only had police forces. The communist party, the Soviet authorities or authorities in Moldova, who were basically trying to break away, controlled the local police. The Transnistrian authorities were made up of a bunch of directors of major enterprises on the left bank. And they formed a popular militia. And these guys had clubs and batons and handguns, but nothing more serious. But there were some serious clashes. The one on the Dubasar bridge, Dubasar Dam in 1991, March of '91. I think it was the first one that locals went, at least when I first arrived there, would continue to observe that. But when the Soviet Union fell apart, three basic things happened. Both sides got serious military equipment as the Red Army dissolved. Moldova had an enormous military force for the Red Army station there, because there were no Soviets troops stationed in Romania. So all of the Soviet troops that would fight World War III on the southern front were stationed in Moldova. They were on both sides of the river. And the government of Kishinow, under former party chief, Mircez Snegor, took over those units of the Red Army that were stationed on the right bank. On the left bank in predestrawia, Transnistria, the situation was murkier, because the local authorities undersmared off the factory directors who had become the organization of workers' collectives that eventually became the Transnistrian authorities. They claim to a lot of the equipment, and there was much more equipment on the left bank than there was on the right bank for historic reasons. But anyway, they tried to seize a number of warehouses full of large arms. As the Russian Federation looking at it this time, you're talking about February, January, February, March of 1992, the Russians are looking at that. They had serious problems with military resistance, including stuff starting in the North Caucasus in Chechnya. And there was a lot of equipment in Moldova that they didn't want to use. So the general settlement when the Soviet Union fell apart that was the portions of the Red Army went to each to the Republic that they were located in. With places like Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, you had a problem. There were areas like Transnister where the jurisdiction wasn't clear. And what the Russians at that time, Yeltsin, didn't want all of the equipment that was in Transnisteria falling into the hands of the separatist authorities because they feared that they would share it with rebels in Abkazia, Ossesia, Chechnya, one of the other sides in Nagorno-Karabakh. And so the Russians declared that the 14th Army, which was the Soviet Union stationed in Moldova, that they would, Russia would retain the assets of the 14th Army that were stationed on the left bank. They didn't challenge Snegor and the Moldova authorities, Keishan, taking those in the right bank. Anyway, what it ended up was there was a split in the troops. The other anomaly that makes it hard is, in the Soviet Union, if you were stationed internally in the Soviet Union, you couldn't serve in the republic that you came from. So if you're Russian, you couldn't be stationed in the Russian Soviet Federation. There were a lot of Russians in the Soviet Army who were stationed in Moldova, but they were actually from Moldova because Moldova had been one of the favorite places for Soviet Russians, or for Russians, who retired from the Soviet Army to settle. Life in Moldova was a little bit easier than it was in some other parts. So a lot of the Russians in the Red Army in Moldova were actually local boys. And they went over to smirnoff and the separatists. The Russians struggled to keep control of the 14th Army. That's why they sent General Lebed down to retain control. And fighting started between the forces of Keishanau and to Snegor and the Russians from the 14th Army that had gone over to smirnoff. And then Lebed stepped in in May and June of 1992 and stopped fighting. This worked to the favor of the separatists because the Moldovan Army was larger and was actually winning. It was moving through Bender at the time when the 14th Army under Lebed intervened. And then the Russians yelled some broker to cease fire. But the deal to cease fire was actually signed between Moldova and Russia with smirnoff in the room. The terms were basically dictated to him. And it froze the conflict. The fighting stopped. There were a few sniping incidents through 1992 and 1993. But the lines stopped where they were. There were Moldovan fighters where I've been in Pogreb many times going through and got to the main road north and south. You can still see the bullet marks in the churches where people took refuge or took cover. The same thing in Bender where Transnistrian authorities kept part of the left bank. The Moldovans also hold a little bit of territory up north near Dubassar, Malavadanova. And it just froze. And it stayed that way. But the conflict, Russia from the very beginning, because of its interest in keeping the military assets there actually became a party to the conflict. And as time has gone on, it's sort of become, you know, well, the conflict was between Moldova and Russia and Transnistria is just the proxy. It's been more complicated than that. But the Russians over time then de facto, you know, Transnistria would not have been able to survive without Russian support. The Russians supported it as a way of trying to exert influence and control over all of Moldova. Yeah, this has happened elsewhere. The Russians, I mean, they left the former Soviet republics, but they didn't want to lose their influence in them. And the way this has happened in Moldova has been, Transnistria has been an instrument of, and the original reasons for the conflict, the peoples in Moldova who didn't want to go with the ethnic majority, the original causes of the conflict have been somewhat obscured. And they've been even more obscured because of the fact that you experienced, because you live there. I mean, the two sides basically get along. There's no problem between the communities. The problem is between the rulers, the guys that have political control. And so it's been a very unusual situation that has defined efforts of both the parties involved and outsiders to settle for a course of 30 years. Yeah. And that absolutely, I want to jump in on that final point you made, which is so true, is that there isn't a problem between the peoples. And I just think of from town here, I can go down the road to the construction supply store. And the manager there is Transnistrian. He comes over for work every day. He speaks Russian and Romanian. And people go back and forth for work, for shopping, for relatives. I mean, lots of families have families on both sides. And you don't have any feel of animosity or anger, at least that I've ever experienced amongst average people, which makes it all the more perplexing that this has gone on for as long as it has in a way. So I want to move forward to kind of be events or the efforts that have been made to resolve the conflict over time. But first, maybe let's do some definitions, because I think that in this type of conversation and the people who work in it often deal in acronyms and in terms of art, that can be a little bit fuddling. So the first one I'd look at is something called the Joint Control Commission and related the security zone that came out of this freezing of the conflict from Russia. Well, the Russians moved in and stopped the fighting. And so they set up, they separated the armed forces of the parties and they established a 10 kilometer security zone along the Seas Fire line, which basically runs along the Nistru River with a couple of exceptions where the bumps of Bolivan or Transnistrian control go into the left or right bank. And the security zone was supposed to be controlled by a peacekeeping force. And the peacekeeping force was going to be tri-partity. It was going to have moldovan forces in it. It was going to have Transnistrian forces in it. And it was going to have a very large component of Russians in it. And for this, the Russians actually brought in almost 10,000 troops from the Volga military district outside of Moldova. So at the very beginning, the peacekeeping force was actually a force from outside rather than locals. But it was tri-partite. And to run it, they set up a Joint Control Commission that had three parties, the three parties in the peacekeeping force represented Moldova, Transnistria, and Russia. And they wrote a ceasefire document that established the rules of the road and set about them trying to achieve a settlement. And that was the beginnings of the talks that eventually became the five plus two. It took a number of changes. But the Joint Control Commission is still there. It still exercises control over the security zone. In other words, there's not supposed to be troop movements or movements of strategy of weapons or other things in there without being pre-announced and controlled by the three parties in the peacekeeping force. The Ukrainians were added, you know, Ukrainian representatives were added, I think in 1993, 10 Ukrainian officers who take part in the peacekeeping force and the Joint Control Commission. And the OSCE mission was added in '93, '94 as an observer to the Joint Control Commission. We go. and listen to it, which is a unique form of torture in itself, but we never get to vote. But it's gone on since, you know, and it's dealing with these small, practical disputes. Did you move something through here or have you set up a check band? They're supposed to control movements of all kinds. So checkpoints are supposed to be illegal. As you know, France and history and the Russians and others have set up dozens of them. None of them are supposed to exist. It's all supposed to be controlled by the Joint Control Commission. They argue about it endlessly. It's gone on. But this is the first thing. This is, handles the physical aspects of the conflict. For over 30 years now, there haven't been any physical aspects of the conflict. Since 1992, there's only been one person killed in the security zone. That was a Moldovan driver who drove at high speeds, who were a gas station, upset a peacekeeper, who fired a rifle at him and killed him, unfortunately, over near Vodavod. And aside from that, the peacekeepers, quote unquote, "stand there or sit there, watch people go buy, check documents every once in a while, and don't do much to interfere with the normal flow of business." Yeah, and so I want to ask a follow-up question on that because I've always been intrigued by it. I've read about the Joint Control Commission and I understand it as a communications body when there are issues. For example, I think it was about almost two years ago now, no, year and a half, two years ago, where the Russian soldiers that are at the checkpoint at Vodavod, left their post with their armored personnel carrier and advanced up to the border control, interior border control point of the Moldovan police and scared everyone to death and thought something was happening and then they just went back. It was some kind of intimidation tactic that I actually wrote about at the time, but that caused outrage in the Joint Control Commission. So regarding the Joint Control Commission, the question I had was actually about the checkpoints because the way it's phrased, it sounds like there should be a tri-partite group of peace keepers, but in practice, they're all Russians, right? There's nowhere where there are Moldovan peacekeepers standing side-by-side with Russian peacekeepers. It's just Russian soldiers, right? There used to be, I mean, there's the OSCE mission can show you. There is a scheme. There are a number of authorized, but as the checkpoint, the peacekeeper checkpoints need to be authorized by the Joint Control Commission. And there are a number of, there are single posts where there are individual Moldovan or transnistrians. There are joint posts where it's Moldovans or Russians and transnistrians or Russians and Moldovans. And then there are tri-partite posts, a few, or there used to be. I haven't followed this in detail in recent years, but these are authorized by the Joint Control Commission. What is not authorized are checkpoint set up by the transnistrians' authorities or the Moldovan authorities. And those aren't supposed to be there. But Russians have generally done nothing about them. But it's happened gradually as the transnistrians have tried to assert their authority, their control over traffic. And the Moldovans have tried to resist or tried to respond to various needs. For example, on the main road to Bender, up from Bulbwaka through Herbovets, that main ship, where now there's big structures there. When I went there, there was nothing but a Schlagbaum, a turnpike. And I first came to the OSE in 1999. And the transnistrians started to build a more permanent edifice. And the Russian colonel then in charge of the peacekeepers took his troops there and tore down that edifice because it was illegal and not authorized by the Joint Control Commission. This colonel was very rapidly fired by Moscow, which sort of set the lay of the land for officers who followed him. And yeah, nobody wants to fight. And so when the transnistrians built something or the Moldovans built something, as long as it was on territory that they basically controlled, the Russians didn't challenge it. And so things have drawn up. The Moldovans established first established customs points in 1999 during the government of Ioann Sturzer to try to get control over the massive undocumented trade. It goes on between the left and right banks in both directions because they were losing customs revenue. And losing control over other stuff, the drugs or other things that might be moving through. It's been a constant problem. And so, but this stuff is all just ad hoc, unrecognized, illegal, and a large part of the Joint Control Commission discussions are one side or another complaining about things. The other side is done in which the Russians are not going to do anything about it. And as long as nobody wants to fight, it remains a war of words and getting away with whatever you can get away with. Understood. So kind of an ad hoc, illegal, but largely tolerated status quo that has just kind of evolved over time. So okay, I want to go back. You mentioned the 5+2 talks. So for people unfamiliar with that, what are the 5+2 talks and how did they start and what were they good for, let's say? Well, from the very beginning, there was an impetus to, how can we settle this? So you had a brief war. So the international community and everybody, lots of people involved. Some people wanted to keep fighting, but most of them didn't. And so how do you settle it? Do you recognize Transnistria is independent? Nobody wanted to do that, not even the Russians. They wanted it to remain part of Moldova, but the question was, how is it, what's the status? How is it, what is it going to be when it's inside Moldova? And so talks started with the Russians and the Transnistrians and the Moldovans in 1992. And Moldova, during the conflict, appealed to both the then CSE and the United Nations. The United Nations had a number of other things going on at the time and could not breach consensus. The OSCE was already busy with the burgeoning war and the Balkans, but they sent a Polish diplomat in the fall of 1992. The Russian Foreign Minister, the Russian Foreign Minister, was a Russian diplomat, and the that would safeguard the rights and the culture of the local inhabitants. In April of 1993, the CSCE set a mission to Moldova to do follow up on this assessment and try to start working towards a number one of political settlement and number two, the withdrawal of foreign forces, Russian troops and number three implementation of OSCE standards, human rights and other things. The Ukrainians looking at the Russian influence in Moldova and Transnistria wanted to be a part of this. So Ukraine first joined with Russia in the settlement talks that the Russians set up following onto the CSIRA and then later on in '94, the OSCE became part of the talks and for 12 years they were the so-called five-sided negotiations. Russia and Ukraine each declared they would be mediators and they declared themselves self-declared they would be guarantor countries. The Moldovans didn't ask for this, the Transnistrians didn't ask for it. And the OSCE basically became the neutral party. Very early on, Moldovans looked at this and said, "Well, you know, we've got Russia here and we've got another big neighbor. We need somebody else big." And so the Moldovans started asking for Americans to be head of the OSCE mission. And with a couple of -- there was a Brit, one or two Brit's that were in the OSCE briefly between '93 and '95. But since 1995, with the exception of the German Klaus Neuker, appointed in 2018, it's been a U.S. diplomat that's been head of the OSCE mission. That's basically been a geopolitical counterweight to Russia. By the EU starts to grow and expand through the 1990s and the first big expansion takes place in 2004. These countries actually join the European Union, Romania's on the CUSP and joins in 2007. But the EU got more interested in Moldova and other former Soviet states as it expanded to the East. And the US expanded, as NATO expanded, the US got more interested. So by the early 2000s, both the EU and the US were more willing and active participant observers and participants in affairs in Moldova among other places. Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus also. And in the wake of the failed Kosovo memorandum and Moldova's turn, the Moldovan government under President Vladimir Varrona. In 2005, the US negotiated an agreement by which the US and the EU joined the settlement talks as observers. And that was probably a different status. The only difference really in what the US and the EU can do in these talks is that they can't take a vote. And the EU have been explicit participants in the settlement talks. And basically, you know, since the 1990s, the talks, the settlement has been at least a dual process. And the basic question between Moldova and its left bank, Transnistria, is what is Transnistria's status going to be inside a reunited Moldova? What are the rights of the local officials, the local property owners, and we'll get to this again. To my mind, property is the important issue there. It's not political. It's who owns the stuff and who's going to own it after Moldova is reunited. But there's this locally. And then there is the geopolitical issues. Who's going to have influence? This was part of Russia for 200 years. The Russians wanted to stay. The locals didn't want them. And the EU supported the locals, supported the independence of the state, the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union. And so there's been a geopolitical battle for influence, as well as a sub-geopolitical balance between Russia and Ukraine. And who will have predominant influence in Moldova? The Ukrainians not really being keen on having a large pro-Russian state at their back. And post 2022, you can see one. It's easy to see why. The talks have dragged on because it's been a consensus, principles, and nobody's wanted to fight. Nobody's been powerful enough to force a solution. And so while there is no active fighting and no real enmity, people have gotten used to life the way it goes. And powerful forces in favor of the status quo have grown up on both sides of the river. And so it's just it's gone on like this. Yeah, and I think that that outlines as well. So the five plus two talks have also kind of evolved over time. They didn't start right away. I want to go specifically to the time around the the Kazakh memorandum and the last big attempt at resolving this and trying to reunite Moldova and France and East Asia. Maybe I'd just ask you to share your perspective on that and perhaps to start with what the main obstacles to resolution were. I always think about it as well. Geopolitics, the ammunition, Dippo and Kolbashna. The as well as Russian gas and the gas debt that's put been put there. I've never heard land and ownership been specified and I find that really interesting. So maybe if you can jump into some of the obstacles and then how this process played out. You know, we had the conflict solved twice 1997 in 2003 twice. Well, the first, well, the first big one 1997 was the so called Moscow memorandum, which you have Gini Primakov was Russian foreign minister. I spent a lot of time and effort on reaching agreement there and the basic agreement in the in the Moscow memorandum 1997 was that the transnessria would would conduct its activities would be in the context of a common state. So transnessria would be a part of Moldova, but what Primakov didn't do when when the then president Luciinsky and smirnoff and he and Yeltsin signed this document. They didn't work out the details and supposedly the five side of talks, which I joined when I came to the OSCE in 1999. Supposedly we were working out the details and a lot of the details, you know, the details involved who is going to control what who is going to be in charge who is going to run the police who is going to run the tech who is going to collect the taxes. Where are the taxes going to go? Where they're going to go to terrestrial where they're going to go to Keesha now. There's some big the steel factory in Rydnetsk, a steel there, a big enterprise, the energy plant, the Moldovska Gretsla, the electricity generating station right on the border with Ukraine. But other big things, you know, the machine tool factory that smirnoff had been director of there's the shoe factory other, you know, there's a number of Kvint, you know, the producing the brand. Big industries and we still talk about them today. They're not they are valuable. They produce money and the question is, you know, who's going to run the local authorities that run these who's going to license them? Yeah, I mean control of the government means you control the by registration, the property rights and you know they couldn't come down to this who was going to power. How was power going to be shared was all of it going to be out of Keesha now out of national authorities at a super unitary state as some of the Romano-phoned population in Keesha now would like or would it be a separate the transnisterians all of you know came from the opening position that we will be nothing more than a very loose confederation. You know, we'll have a common flag, but that's about it. And other people leave us alone will leave you alone and will all you know, we'll all make money our own way. And gradually the we failed to reach agreement on specifics with the Moscow memorandum because the details other than a common state. What does this mean? You know, I mean, what kind of legislature what and I have to say, you know, one of the one of the early debates from the very beginning even on the right bank was what how was Moldova going to be governed. Yeah, the right bank. There was a serious debate when they wrote the Constitution one of the most controversial sessions. I had a chance to read the stenographic records of their, you know, the convention that they had that wrote their Constitution. They talked about having, you know, various forms of republics, including a federation. The feder debate over whether they should have a federation or not because they had an autonomy agreement with Gagosia. Yeah, was one of the most bitter debates, but they themselves, you know, went through various iterations of local government. There was a movement in the 1990s to reorganize the oblasts into Joudets, you know, like in Romania. And there were going to be 11 Joudets in Moldova until the communist came back in and rewrote and went back to oblast. So, yeah, there were debates in Moldova too over local government. The whole thing is, of course. So we're getting as the talks are gradually stalling as President Voronin comes in in 2001 and tries, you know, first to negotiate and then to pressure transnistria into, you know, assuming or agreeing with Moldova. The question came up, you know, said, well, can we move beyond the Moscow memorandum? And, you know, I was one of those in private. I asked the, I'm an American. I come from a federation. I had two Germans in my mission. Germans of Germany's a federated country. We had other examples of, you know, we looked. And, and I asked the, you know, I asked that both the Moldovans are transnistrians in private, you know, would you look at something some sort of federal solution. the the the the transitory. You know that the response was was really funny because in private they said we can't figure out why the stupid Russians haven't proposed this long since. Wow. Yeah. The the the the Moldurium Veronen and his advisors took it under advisement and gradually moved toward it in 2002 Veronen proposed in in so called key of document he proposed it as someone else's work but it was basically his idea a crude federation and so when I came back in 2003 it was actually Veronen's initiative. He said to me I'm going to go to the Russians and I'm coming to you OSE I'm going to propose that we rewrite the Moldurium Constitution to make it a federation and Transnistria can be one of the subjects do you support that? You know they they my Dutch from the OSE chair and I looked at and said well you know if you want to do it we will support you 100%. So he went to Russia and he talked with Putin and he came back and said yeah Putin has done this to me and he said I told Putin to appoint a special representative because his foreign ministry is no good they're useless. So it took a while and we started out in the CSE work OSE working with Moldova we got together we got both Transnistrians and Moldova and together they they established a joint constitutional committee commission you know to representatives from both sides to write a new new federal constitution the OSE we got money and we bought a building and we opened an office in Bendaire for them to meet and to talk about this and we wrote a draft guideline for a federal constitution and OSE mediators proposal that we were we worked with the Ukrainians and the Russians to try to get a joint proposal that we could propose that we could advance in the five-sided talks. At the same time in the summer of 2003 Demetri Kuzak the Westerners often say Kuzak I mean it's pronounced like a pronounced Kossak because it actually it's the Russian word for Kossak Kossak Kossak. Demetri Nikolayevich appears and he starts working bilaterally with the Kishnau and Tiraspol and the Russians at first tried to hide it from us it was funny because they but the first the Moldovans and then the Transnistrians introduced me to Kuzak and yeah I ended up meeting with him and I said you know why don't we join efforts you're working with these guys I've got these guys working on a joint constitution and he told me he said well you know the Moldovans want to work individually with me with bilaterally with us that's what and I so I asked the Moldovans to say no the Russians tell us they want to work bilater and you know I could never I I'm not my own suspicion who was telling the truth but you know I got this from both sides so we ended up the LSE produced a document in November of 2003 that was guidelines for establishing a federal state in Moldova. At the same time you know I was actually running around Kishna trying to get the Russian ambassador to sign this so the letter of Transmittal so I could give it to Verona when I get a call from Kuzak saying we've got you know the Moldovans have agreed to the doc you know Moldovans and Transnistrians have agreed to the document I was working on and we want you to join us so I went and met Kuzak I got the document from him I checked with Verona and asked do you support this he said well yes and I asked you know we went back and forth we read it I met with with my counterparts from you know the chair from Holland with representatives from all the OSE delegations in Vienna and we looked at it we said well you know if the Moldovans tell us they're going to sign this we can't really tell them not to but we're not going to support it because there were there were a couple of key differ there were a lot of similarities between what we've been working on in the OSE but there were some key differences and you know in the end we can't support it interestingly enough the document that Kuzak showed me did not have anything in it about a true presence and if you look in my book I've got both variants because when I saw the final document on the Sunday night before the Tuesday Putin was supposed to come to Moldova for the signing there was a provision there for a true presence of Russian troops for like 20 years or 70 it built 20 20 like that one in there at the end. Yeah it's not going to end and so we had a big bruha you know we went to the Moldovans you know that the OSE the U.S. all went to Verona and said what are you doing you can't support you know I've support this Verona and agonized it through Monday night into Tuesday morning and early I don't know exactly what time I could tell you the Moldova negotiator called me at six in the morning on the day Putin was supposed to rise and said they'll be no signing they'll be no visit you know Putin was apparently on his way to the airport so he was really angry that really stated wow you know the failure of this memorandum you know upset the whole negotiating process but it also discredited the idea of a federation which was controversial in and of itself but it discredited it you know for time immemorial in Moldova and there's no way you can talk about local autonomy but you can't talk about a federation in Moldova since that time without getting beat over the head by you know one one faction or another well we were really close and the key differences aside from the Russian troops the we we had a bicameral legislature you know sort of similar to what you have in the U.S. or Germany sort of combinations you you had asymmetric authority we use and the L.S.C. as models reduce the Canadian Constitution the statute for Quebec giving Quebec greater powers than some of the other Canadian provinces and the Catalonia statute in Spain giving Catalonia more authority than other parts of Spain and Spain was actually a good model because Spain is allegedly a unitary state but it has parts of it which have sort of de facto federal authority and then the way to settle questions over that the heart really of both documents or certainly the O.S.C. document was the list of things where we said well these functions of government should stay with the center foreign policy national defense but these these other functions like administration of taxes you know registration of companies things could probably done be done by local authorities and you know they this was a way of settling a lot of these questions of you know what should be run from the center and what should be run by by locals the questions that arise in any government but particularly important with the transness area what what the Kosoch memorandum did it had the failure had two things first it it set back a conflict resolution I mean we it was over 10 years until we started you know the O.S.C. and the mediators started making progress again and that didn't occur until late in the pluck at Newt time and that was basically more over specific questions you know dealing when pluck at Newt was in charge in Kishnaya and Sharif had come into its own and basically running transness area so that was one thing conflict resolution you know or the or moving to agreement between the sides was set back the other thing was geopolitical it took president Veron in some time but this is my perception but anyway I mean the Russians basically stabbed him in the back with this he they had the agreement unite the country but then the Kosoch memorandum had the troop it had the troop um president yeah but it also had if you look at it it went in how the upper body of the legislature was set up it gave the transnistrians of veto not only over what happened in transness area but over any policy of domestic politics within Moldova as a whole the transnistrians would be able to control enough votes in that upper body so that they would be basically able to paralyze the whole country and I've seen this uh sorry I've seen this referred to sometimes as an asymmetric federal system and as I recall it would be basically if you if you had combined the votes under this this proposal of transnessrian gougesia they would collectively outnumber the rest of the country even though they only represent I don't know 15 20 percent of the population of the country so it's a massive disproportionate allocation of power to the most pro-russian or Russian-speaking areas is that a basically how it it was framed out yeah yeah it it it was in this way it was uh you know in many ways similar to the US Senate uh way which disproportionally represents small rural states as opposed to california and vermont have the same weight or california north decoda or Wyoming - Right, right. - Wait, US Senate, and according to population, of course, that's, yeah, no, basically the version we did in the CSE didn't have this drawback. Transnistria would have had effective control over its own affairs with the list of competency, you know, delineated. In the Pekosak version, Transnistria could basically have enough votes in the upper chamber to veto anything Kishno wanted to do on its side of the river. - Right, which was, yeah, I mean, it's not only on Democratic, it's something that if you looked at it, no president, no governor could accept. So, you know, it upset the idea of, I mean, it just throughout the idea of federation setback conflict resolution, geopolitically. I mean, it was also a stab in the back of Russia. He'd gone to Putin and said, "Give me somebody to help me get the country together." And he gets this. By early 2005, as he starts his second term, Veronin, you know, even before he starts his second term, Veronin signs the EU Moldova action plan. I mean, it's from this time that Moldova explicitly starts turning towards the EU and Euro integration as the dominant part of Moldovan politics, much as people, and I mean, there's much to criticize of the period that the communists were found the country '01 to '09. But it was during this time, and as a result, really what happened with Kosovo in my perception, that Moldova turns as officially as a government as a country, and it really, you know, EU integration becomes not just a desire of, you know, a portion of the political spectrum, but it really becomes a government and state policy that has been maintained pretty consistently since that time. - Can I ask you a question about why, maybe not, I guess, why it failed, but why it was set up to fail. Do you think that the Kosovo memorandum represented overreach by Putin and the Russians, or was it an intentional kind of torpedo into the mix? 'Cause people talk a lot about how Russia uses these frozen conflicts and many statelets to exert control. And I think it's become a, yeah, there's become a popular perception or discussion that Russia doesn't actually have any interest in resolving Transnistria, Abkazia, South Ossetia, like they like the frozen conflict. Do you think that was the case at the time, or was this just overreach? - No, I, my belief is they really wanted to solve it, but the Russian goal from the very beginning, I mean, I had, I had Russians tell me this in various ways, some of them explicitly. I mean, the late, you've, Genie Primakov told me, flat out, when we were working together, when Putin appointed him as the Russian Special Negotiator. I mean, I was his, he was my counterpart, what a disparity, and you know, I'm a good ranking diplomat and he's a former prime minister, but, you know, we actually got along, but Primakov told me, he said, "My aim is to maximize Russian influence in Moldova, not Austria, Moldova." And this has been, I mean, consistently their aim. I mean, they're very things, you know, that discussion with Primakov, I said, you know, well, at that time, relations with Russia were not too bad. And I said, you know, I think in the end, Washington might accept this, it really depends on how you do it, you know, rather, you know, you, you, and of course, what they did, I believe, you know, to go back to your question about Kosok, I think this was intentional. I think on Putin, keep the West out, keep Russian control, and Transnistria, the Transnistrian veto was a means, an instrument to, you know, an instrument to maintain effective control over Kishnaya, 'cause that's what they're after. Transnistria doesn't mean that much to them. Kishnaya was the part, that's where Pushkin lived, that's where one of the earliest Russian literary figures, Kantomir was Kospodar of Moldova, who was breaking away from the Turks. I mean, this is the Russian time frame there, and they haven't been able to get away from it, and it's what they still want. It's why today, the pressure is through guys like Shor, is to win in politics on the right bank, and not just keep control over the separatist entity. And so that's my perspective. I mean, the Russians will have to tell you one way or the other what it is they think they want, but everything, everything points explicitly and implicitly points to that. And I think this was just a case where it was clearly, they didn't want to, they kept me, they kept basically what the term, jiving me, playing me along in the OSCE process, working with me, but the real process in their eyes was with Kosok working with Verona and Smirnov, and we tried to bust into that. They hoped they could cajolus along. I mean, I got along with Kosok, and I asked him point blank, I mean, I told you a couple times, you know, join us and he, no, I can't, you know, I mean, I just got this stuff. And in many other things, we worked together productively. I mean, one of the other things at this time to show that, they were still relations with the rest, west were still going, we got all of the, basically all of the Russian heavy weapons, between the time I worked with Premikov and was 'cause we got all of the Russian heavy weapons out of Transnistria, and half of the ammunition. - And sorry, you're, so for the ammunition, you're referring to the Deepo and Kolodov. - Kolodov, no. - Yeah. - And for the heavy weapons, I've seen that written about, but what was actually there at the time, we talked about tanks? - 500 tanks. - 500 tanks. - Yeah, equal number of, or armored personnel carriers, all sorts of mobile artillery pieces, trucks, bridging equipment, other stuff, all gone. The Transnistrians from the very beginning, they managed in '91, '92 to get a hold of 18 tanks, 18 T62s. That's what the Transnistrians have. The peacekeepers have a small number of armored personnel carriers, but, you know, insignificant number. I mean, they had 40,000 metric tons. I mean, you can't imagine. You know, 17 million bullets for rifles, five million shells for tanks in Kolodov. We got half of that out, but all of the heavy weapons. - Wow. - There was no second front on Agessa in 2002, because of what happened back in from '99 to 2003. And while the process was working, the Russians were forcing the Transnistrians and, you know, working hard to get all of their stuff out. And the process stopped when the Kuznetk memorandum fell apart, and the geopolitical alignment started to deteriorate in 2004. But, yeah, basically, 2003 was, yeah, when the Russia and the West were still working, not somewhat aligned, not totally across purposes there. And the Russians hoped they could, they could bring us along while retaining primacy of control or influence in Kolodovah. And I think they overreached. They put in something that was clearly going to simply wouldn't fly with the locals and wouldn't fly with the Western powers that were supporting the government in Kishnayao. - Right. Wow, so I'm sorry, I've got a circle back to 500 tanks. I was not aware of that. And just like you said, that is the second front. I mean, that in the context of where we are today, that could have been very important. So I mean, obviously that's quite a good accomplishment. Quite a huge accomplishment. - This was taking back. This was the Soviet arsenal that would have fought World War III on the Southern front. And it was all stationed down there in Moldova and Ukraine because they couldn't get it into Romania because of Chowshescu, the way the way things worked out. And they were content to keep it there. This is why the Russians kept that in 1992, rather than allowing it to go to the separatists because it was such a serious arsenal. During the 1990s, they worked gradually to get a lot of it back to Russia. Yeah, a lot of it they didn't destroy. They'd simply took it back to Russia. - Right. - We got an OSCE front. We paid several million euros to fund transport of this stuff back to Russia. They tried to sell a lot of it on the open market. But nobody, in 1997, they gave a list of them. of the stuff that was in Transnistria to the OSC and said, does anybody want to buy it? Nobody did. They told me subsequently the minister at ministry defense told me that yeah, they had some buyers, but they were sanctioned states in Asia and Africa that even the Russians wouldn't say. Well, at that time they were more susceptible. They wouldn't sell too. So, you know, I mean, this was something that, it's an indication of how different things were in the 90s and the early 2000s from how they are today. Yeah, and just say, you know, when you come to it today, you assume they've always been that way. And how, no, it's a question of how much is it changing? How did we get there? But anyway, this was really a turning point because we lost the opportunity that, I mean, the other thing that I'll add to that just that, it's a, Voronin came from Transnistria. He was born in a family in quarters of a, he spoke Romanian at home until he went to kindergarten in the Soviet Union and then had to learn, relearn Romanian once he became president. He told me in private once that it's not seen late for the president of his country to speak the state language badly. And he took lessons in private. I hope I'm not giving away conferences that he will come back. He's still alive. But I was impressed by, you know, he had a genuine design for this region to be back into a part of Moldova. A lot of people in the right bank don't see why Transnistria, why they needed it all. And that's another question entirely. But he really wanted it. He's really been the only Moldovan president who really put Transnistria at the top of his agenda. And so he pushed it. And when the Russians betrayed him, I think it led to serious consequences. - Yeah, it's incredible what a turning point that is. And I didn't know Voronin was from Transnistria, but as you say, it also reminded me his, well, what used to be his Dacia, I don't imagine he uses it much anymore, is actually right down the road from here. It's in Perita, not in Franavia, but it's part of this peninsula, this zone between the two, well, between the two sides, I guess, that has called to a lot of politicians. You've had a lot of people who do go back and forth, but there hasn't been a serious attempt to resolve it since then. And maybe I'm aware of the time and we've been talking for a while. This has been fantastic, but going forward, I guess I want to ask, what is your perception of splashing forward towards now or in the time between, there hasn't been a serious diplomatic effort from anybody to resolve this up in between the cosmic memorandum to today, the five plus two talks have now completely collapsed with the war. I think the term of art that's being used as people say, they're recognized as non-functional because Ukraine and Russia are both party to them so it doesn't work. What's your perception on where things are and maybe what the future holds? Well, the first thing is between Moldova and Transnistria. Yeah, these guys always knew each other. And the communities have always gotten together one of the things, if you look at it over time, living there, they get along, they've had to make living day to day and the societies and business communities cooperate. I mean, there's a tremendous amount and Transnistria couldn't survive and some parts of Moldova couldn't prosper without significant dealings going on. So in public, people complain about smuggling or other things, but in private, they are deeply engaged in it. I mean, basically, I noted from when I first arrived, Odessa, Oblast, Transnistria and Moldova have always been closely connected commercially. The Moldova uses the port of Odessa, but commerce just goes through there. And some of it does it legally and others, other parts of it happens illegally. But gradually, the economies and business communities have just grown up cooperating, living with one another, developing. I mean, Moldova's gotten the bulk of its electricity from Transnistria for years. So it started to shift to Ukraine, nuclear electricity produced nuclear from Ukraine, but then the war cut that off. It's now on the European grid, but for a long time, they've worked together. Other stuff, Moldovan, Romania, Ukraine and Moldova all sell scrap metal to the steel mill in Rydnitsa, Transnistria, made money off of these revenge. I mean, Shereef, the Transnistrian cumglomerate, does business, people go back and forth. There are a lot of connections there. I remember in 2020, when Maya Sandu was running for president first of talking about how she was gonna stop the corruption on the left bank. My response, I mean, I told her direct, I see, to do that, you're gonna have to stop the corruption on the right bank too, because these guys are being together. I had seen it, as an outsider, with no authority, you could note it, but we couldn't get them, it was hard to get authorities to move, and it always has, and so, one of the reasons that it's remained unresolved is that it's in the interest of people who run important enterprises and institutions to keep it that way. They've grown up making money out of that, and you know, it's very hard to change. And there are numerous examples of that on both the right and left bank over time. The other thing is the basic issue, I've found, I visited Transnistrian several times since the start of the big war in Ukraine. The Transnistria has changed. You know, really when I first came there in '99, indeed it was basically a Russian proxy. Smirnoff was overtly, he told me directly, an ally of Russia, although he didn't want to be a part of Russia, because as he put it to me, the current situation suits me perfectly. In other words, being in order to earn money, but being allied with Russia, so they would support him and not let Kishin out, take him over. But, you know, the Shereev has come up, and it basically, the Konglomer, Shereev basically runs the left bank. I mean, there's a substantial Russian presence, there's Russian influence, there's a small number of Russian troops, but Shereev is a dominant influence. They're their proxies, or the people they sponsor, run the administration there. And I use the metaphor. They've got a football club in the European Champions League. They want to play, they want to play Man United in England, rather than play in Krasnoyarsk. Right. The Russians understand this, and they hate it. And the Russians have been, I've been, was told since 2017, 2018, basically when Kaza came back, I mean, one of the chief tasks has been to bring Shereev to heal, to Russia, and they failed. And the history, and the bulk of the trans-disterine businesses, I mean, there's FSB and then troops and others there, but the businesses in Trans-Nistria are really interested in the European Union. They've been a part of the DCFTA, the trade agreement since 2015. They've already for almost 10 years, they've been conducting their trade in the legal space of the Republic of Moldova. Goods go out in and out of Trans-Nistria, out of Trans-Nistria marked as the production of the Republic of Moldova. They were paying customs fees now, they've since January 1st, the Moldova and Kishnatov, and they wanted them, had to pay duties, which is what provoked this response. It's not joining Russia, but having to pay money to Kishnatov. And so this is, you know, basically, the left bank is happy being a part of Moldova. The question really remains, so what is the status gonna be? You know, if we say join to Moldovan politics, do we get a subordinate role, do we get our property taken away as it, you know, nationalizes it? This is these are the questions that I see that are really the important things. And not a question of, do we go with Russia? I mean, I, in private, you'll hear from Trans-Nistrians. We didn't, we didn't, start this war, we didn't support it, we don't want to be a part of it. And if anything happens, we'll try to stay out of it and we'll try to keep things calm. And you notice if there've been provocations on the left bank and a few, but remarkably few, it's for a pro-Russian region. With a major war, Russia's involved in the neighborhood. It's been remarkably quiet and very few. Very quiet. Demonstrations of support for Russia, which I think indicates to you. They're limited by the presence of Russians there as to what they can actually do. And they may be lying to me when I go there, who knows. But you look at what's happened. Clearly, they're already a part of Moldova's move towards the European Union. Even in 1999, when I came there, over 50% of Transnistria's foreign trade was with Western Europe. And it's been that way over almost three decades. So there's far more now, too. I think it's 75% to have. 80% of the latest figure. I just saw a figure this week. Their future is with some sort of association with the EU. And their future, which in private, they may admit to you reluctantly, basically it's within Moldova. They're better off being a big fish in Moldova than a really little fish in Ukraine. And those are the options. Going with Russia is not an option anymore. It's going to take time for the Russians to accept that. And it may be a bumpy process. But I mean, I look at it now. What really is going to determine the outcome is the outcome of the war in Ukraine. If Ukraine even semi-prevails, then they all go to the EU. It's only if there's a disaster. Yeah, because the Russian push, clearly they were headed for a Dessa. And they weren't going to stop it for the Dessa. Right. They fail. And it doesn't, you know, absent something falling out of the sky. It doesn't appear they're going to get that. So, yeah, it looks like, you know, the real issue is how does the war in Ukraine and what are the terms, which will determine some of the manner in which Moldova, Transnistria, move towards the EU. And then you have the issue of how do you settle this status? And that's where, right now, it's in limbo because the bigger game is in politics on the right bank. That's where the Russian effort is. Yeah. It's not, I mean, foreign minister Pupshoy was here in April. And overtly, he was asked about Transnistria. And he said, I mean, almost quoting that basically his first words out of his mouth were Transnistria is not the problem. The Russian leader, the right bank, is the problem. Yeah. And, yeah, where, I mean, that just goes along with my perception, 30 years of dealing with this is, you know, Russia wants all of Moldova. Not just, you know, and that's the only way they're going to get it is if they can win the elections in '04 and '24 and '25. Or the war in Ukraine. Or the war in Ukraine, exactly. So, okay, I think that's a perfect spot to wind up our talk here. And it just couldn't agree with you more. I think the elections this year and next year in Moldova are decisive. I think we've seen a huge amount of Russian focus there. At the same time that, like you said, we don't see so much from Transnistria or in Transnistria. But it's an aspect, but it's not either a protagonist or a primary zone of the debate or, you know, having a bit conflict of some kind. And of course, to underline it a hundred times, I think the Moldova government says this in every diplomatic foray they're in. But Ukraine is fighting for Moldova's continued existence as a state as well. And at the outcome of the war, we'll have huge effects here. So until that happens, some of these negotiations are a wait and see point. Dr. Hill, I want to thank you so much again for agreeing to come on and talk about this. I've learned a lot and I feel like I'm decently well read in. So I think our listeners will enjoy it a ton. Thank you again. Well, you're quite well. Thanks for having me and I hope your listeners get something out of this. But it's a pleasure doing it. Pleasure talking about it and pleasure seeing you. Absolutely. I thank you again. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Moldova Matters podcast. For more news and analysis about politics, economics and security in Moldova, go to the Moldova Matters substack. You can find it at Moldova Matters dot substack dot com and subscribe for free. And if you happen to like what we do, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. It's just $5 a month and helps support all the work that goes into making Moldova Matters. Thanks a lot. Bye.