Russia’s military staged training exercises yesterday in Transdniestria, a breakaway sliver of Moldova that is a focus of tension following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.
Nato’s top military commander said on Sunday he was worried that Russia might have its eye on Transdniestria, a largely Russian-speaking region that borders western Ukraine, after seizing Crimea, which has a narrow ethnic Russian majority.
Nato commander worried Russia may have its eye on Transdniestria
The Interfax news agency quoted a spokesman for Russia’s Western Military District, Colonel Oleg Kochetkov, as saying that Russian forces stationed in Transdniestria had “conducted an anti-terrorism drill and practised operations to rebuff an attack on their military base”.
Transdniestria, with a population of half a million, has run its own affairs since 1992 after fighting a brief war against the Moldovan government over fears that it might join Romania after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russia has a permanent garrison of peacekeepers there.
Russia has held several military drills during months of political upheaval in Ukraine. Some have brought large Russian forces close to Ukraine’s eastern border, adding to concerns of an invasion after President Vladimir Putin secured permission from Parliament to send in troops to protect Russians if needed.
Earlier yesterday, a spokes-man for Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, responsible for Russia’s long-range nuclear arsenal, said around 10,000 troops would take part in exercises until Saturday in western Siberia’s Omsk region and Orenburg in the southern Urals, more than 2,000 km from Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Meanwhile, yesterday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev shrugged off sanctions over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and said that even if the West imposes more punitive measures, companies that want to work in Russia will not be deterred, Interfax news agency reported.
“Everything will be fine,” Medvedev was quoted as saying when asked how co-operation with foreign oil and gas companies would be affected if Western nations broaden sanctions against Russia.
“Those who want to work with us in any area, whether it is science, production, investment in our economy – they aren’t going anywhere, because this is a completely normal process,” he was quoted as saying.
If companies do pull out, he said, “it means they didn’t really want” to work in Russia in the first place, Interfax quoted him as saying at a forum on innovation in the oil-producing Tatarstan region.