Why Russians in ‘original frozen conflict’ skipped Vladimir Putin’s re-election

Vladimir Putin has basked in what he said was a record turnout by Russians for his re-election this weekend.

But in a sliver of land in eastern Moldova, Russian passport holders showed up in far fewer numbers than in 2018. 

Transnistria is sometimes dubbed the “original frozen conflict”, as it was the first former Soviet region where Moscow stationed soldiers after a brief Russia-backed secessionist war from Moldova in 1992. It has a population of 350,000, and while 97 per cent hold Moldovan passports, more than half are also Russian nationals who routinely cast their votes for Putin.

On Monday, Transnistrian authorities reported the lowest participation rate in the Russian presidential election in 18 years. Some 46,000 Russian citizens, just a fifth of the electorate in the breakaway region, cast their votes on Sunday, compared with more than 73,000 six years ago. The number of polling stations was also much lower than in previous elections: just six this year compared with more than 20 in the previous decades.

“Russians have opened polling stations in Transnistria for 33 years,” said Romanian political analyst Armand Goșu from the University of Bucharest. “They are marking their territory, showing that Transnistria is theirs even if they are at war with Ukraine and the Russian border is far away.”

The low turnout, however, indicated an “irreversible” trend away from Russia, which had been catalysed by Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he said. 

“Even if they are assaulted by Russian propaganda, some of the residents of Transnistria have begun to emancipate, look for alternative sources of information and lose interest in the Russian . . ‘elections’,” Goșu said.

In the decades after it proclaimed its independence — which Moscow has not recognised — Transnistria’s economy was kept afloat by a thriving black market and illicit trade with Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 severed most of those connections. Those ties were already strained by a leadership change in Chișinău, when pro-EU Maia Sandu became president in 2020, a break with a long tradition of Moscow-leaning or oligarch-friendly rulers in Moldova.

Sandu applied for EU membership in 2022, and last year Moldova was granted candidate status. Accession talks are due to start this year.

As a result, Transnistria’s main trading partners are no longer in the east, but in the EU, as the bloc accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the breakaway region’s exports and imports. 

But with the western pivot came stricter rules. Since January, businesses in Transnistria are obliged to pay duties to Chișinău after a 2021 customs code entered into force.

Moldovan deputy prime minister Oleg Serebrian told the Financial Times that the new laws brought “uniformity” and sought to establish a level playing field for companies on the entire territory of Moldova.

Last month, for the first time in 18 years, the rulers of Transnistria convened an-all deputies congress and called for Moscow’s protection, citing a growing humanitarian and economic crisis.

Vitaly Ignatiev, who is the region’s self-proclaimed foreign minister, explained that the call for help was not an invitation for Russia to annex Transnistria.

“We appealed, including to the Russian Federation as a guarantor and mediator in the conflict resolution process, with a request to exert political and diplomatic influence [over Chișinău] to normalise the situation,” Ignatiev told the FT.

He said authorities in Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, are unable to pay salaries, pensions or social benefits as a result of the economic squeeze from Chisinau. The congress also addressed the Red Cross over an alleged healthcare crisis in the region.

“The problem has acquired catastrophic proportions,” said Ignatiev. “The import of medicines into [Transnistria] is limited, which has led to a shortage and rising prices for medicines; the import of X-rays is blocked.”

Serebrian denied there being any humanitarian crisis and said that just like the tax regime, mechanisms to regulate drug safety standards and prices have to be unique across the whole territory of Moldova — including Transnistria.

“There is no humanitarian crisis . . . on the contrary, we can see a rise in the local consumers’ and companies’ demand for EU and Moldovan medicine,” Serebrian said. Moldovans in Transnistria, meanwhile, also benefit from medical services across the country, some of them free.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it acknowledged concerns about “the potential humanitarian needs that could remain unattended to in the absence of the requisite medical equipment”.

“Civilian populations are our priority in any situation, and we are in conversation in both Tiraspol and Chisinau to find the best possible solution,” it said.

In contrast with the election in Transnistria, Moldovan authorities allowed the opening of just one polling station at the Russian embassy in Chișinău, where a few protesters carried signs saying “Peace/World Without Putin” or “Don’t vote for fascist Putler”, an apparent portmanteau of Putin and Adolf Hitler.

Moldova’s foreign ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador for “undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the country. On Tuesday, Chișinău also declared a staff member at the Russian embassy to be persona non grata in Moldova.

The French foreign ministry on Monday condemned Moscow for setting up polling stations in Transnistria “without the consent” of Moldovan authorities. The US embassy in Chișinău also denounced it as yet another example of “how the Kremlin does not respect the neutrality, sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Moldova.

Transnistria declared independence from Soviet Moldova in 1990 and fought a brief war in 1992 between Russian-backed separatists and Moldovan forces that ended with a ceasefire and a frozen conflict ever since. Moscow has maintained a military base there with about 1,500 troops — currently mostly locals — and a Soviet-era ammunition depot.

According to Moldova’s intelligence services, Russia is intensifying its efforts to destabilise Chișinău ahead of presidential elections and an EU referendum in October.

Officials in Chișinău are wary of Moscow planning more disruption and violent protests, and employing separatists in both Transnistria and Moldova’s southern autonomous region of Găgăuzia, populated by about 120,000 pro-Russia Turkic people.

Two weeks ago, Găgăuzia governor Evghenia Gutsul posted a photo of herself shaking hands with Putin in Sochi. She, too, complained of pressure from Chișinău and said “the Russian leader promised to support Găgăuzia”.

According to Goșu, the Moldovan government should drop its “laissez-faire” attitude and be more radical in tackling security threats in Găgăuzia and Transnistria.

But “the chances for Russians to succeed in their hybrid war in Moldova depends on the government’s capacity to push for reforms”, said Goșu, who added that the stakes would be highest in general elections next year.