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Comment by plextoria | Hacker News Reader

Moldova did not have a professional army at the time because it was in the process of leaving the Soviet Union.

The only reason Transnistria exists is for Russia to exert influence on the politics of Moldova. Read the "Primakov memorandum of 1997": "3. Transdniestria shall participate in the conduct of the foreign policy of the Republic of Moldova - a subject of international law - on questions touching its interests. Decision of such questions shall be taken by agreement of the Parties."

In other words, Russia participates in the conduct of the foreign policy of the Republic of Moldova on questions touching its interests. An independent Transnistria will not offer the same advantages, and an Russian exclave between Ukraine and Moldova would hardly prove itself economically or militarily viable.

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> Moldova did not have a professional army at the time because it was in the process of leaving the Soviet Union.

Not under dispute. I cite lack of professionalism only because it's generally accepted to increase the likelihood of abuses. And I'm not saying any such abuses or war crimes or genocide happened (as soviet propaganda claims) or were even planned or likely. But I do genuinely think the danger was real and the Soviet troops that were there and intervened imho were not doing so because they wanted long term levers over Moldovan politics but because they had genuine immediate concerns for the ethnic Russian and Ukrainian residents (which in many cases included themselves). Note again: if Russia wanted to, the Russians could have they could have annexed them any time in the last 20-some years, they could have sued for independence easily but they just sued for peace.

And 20-some years later, while there has been some violence, it has been relatively peaceful, certainly the complete opposite of (say) what we've seen from Russia in Chechnya. So that's why I believe that, in retrospect, the early Russian involvement was probably the right call.

Perhaps there's a best case counterfactual scenario where Russian troops are called off and Moldovans end up killing a few hundred separtists and it's over (this is slightly fewer deaths than we saw historically).

There's also much worse counterfactuals where the Moldovan irregulars engage in war crimes or the rebels hang on for years and you have long bloody sieges or they go underground and you have terrorist bombings that go on for decades and harsh Moldovan responses and maybe the Russian army gets involved anyway just thousands more end up dead.

You put it exactly like the official russian propaganda tries to - there was a "local" dispute in which they intervened to avoid further bloodshed. Nothing farther from the truth! The whole thing was timely orchestrated. Moldovan forces did not fight with locals, they were fighting with volunteer guards sent over from all of the falling Soviet Union, especially cossaks! If Russia had no interest, no bloodshed whatsoever would have happened, because there isn't any of the necessary natural preconditions for that (like you are implying).

> You put it exactly like the official russian propaganda tries to

This is patently false.

(1) Russian propaganda claimed Moldovans were massacring civilians, I've explicitly said I disbelieve this.

(2) Russian propaganda claimed all sorts of independent troop action and the general story is "we just helped arm the Transnistrians" while I'm fairly explicit that Russian troops were there fighting intentionally, not just suppliers, not just some of them acting independently of the Russian chain of command.

(3) I also strongly doubt that Russian propaganda says that they've made a terrible mess of Chechnya as I explicitly say in the above post.

So that's 3 explicit counter-examples from a single short comment. So much for my status as Russian propaganda mouthpiece.

> The whole thing was timely orchestrated.

I agree, the Moldovan troops rolled in right after the UN granted them member status, same fucking day. Perhaps I misunderstood you.

> Moldovan forces did not fight with locals,

Basic facts dispute this.

The first fatalities in the emerging conflict took place on 2 November 1990, two months after the PMR's 2 September 1990 declaration of independence. Moldovan forces entered Dubăsari in order to separate Transnistria into two halves, but were stopped by the city's inhabitants, who had blocked the bridge over the Dniester, at Lunga. In an attempt to break through the roadblock, Moldovan forces then opened fire.[21] In the course of the confrontation, three Dubăsari locals, Oleg Geletiuk, Vladimir Gotkas and Valerie Mitsuls, were killed by the Moldovan forces and sixteen people wounded

> they were fighting with volunteer guards sent over from all of the falling Soviet Union, especially cossaks!

As it turns out they fought both locals and cossacks! and Russian army and more.

> If Russia had no interest, no bloodshed whatsoever would have happened, because there isn't any of the necessary natural preconditions for that (like you are implying).

I'm open to the fact that Russian involvement made Transnistria worse off and I've explicitly said it's possible bloodshed would have been somewhat lower if they had stayed out. However 'possible' is not a guarantee.

I'd like to see you make the case for your claim above but you haven't even begun to and so you don't get to write QED at the bottom. As far as I know the 'necessary natural preconditions' for bloodshed are fairly low you just need a couple groups angry at each other and some guns on one or both sides and the lack of an inhibiting leviathan. That certainly existed in Transnistria without Russian involvement.

"Russian propaganda claimed Moldovans were massacring civilians, I've explicitly said I disbelieve this. So much for my status as Russian propaganda mouthpiece."

I explicitly pointed the exact piece of the russian propaganda you're trumpeting, but you are deliberately choosing to ignore it and to consider instead whatever you want to!

"«Moldovan forces did not fight with locals,» Basic facts dispute this."

Actually, only claims (not facts) dispute this. The involvement of "Moldovan forces" came much later, because when the first incidents happened Moldova did not had an army but only a police force which definitely did not had the competence to perform large scale drills like separation of a (newly declared) country in halves! The first causalities were the Moldovan policemen in a Tiraspol police post. I don't know where you get your sources from, a reference would have been welcomed.

"As far as I know the 'necessary natural preconditions' for bloodshed are fairly low you just need a couple groups angry at each other and some guns on one or both sides and the lack of an inhibiting leviathan. That certainly existed in Transnistria without Russian involvement."

If you go that far consider that loosely controlled armed groups existed all over Russia itself and nowhere it was treated as possible cause for genocide or whatnot. The preconditions that I was referring to is the base (usually ideological in nature) on which an irreconcilable dispute can grow. This wasn't the case in Moldova because Moldovan authorities were very open to peacefully address the kind of issues that Russia claims were central in the Transnistrian conflict. Just look at the Gagauzian Autonomy and take it as a reference for settling a minority related issue without the involvement of russian tanks!

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