By Edward Lucas, European correspondent of The Economist 

On 17 September a non-country will be holding a non-vote. The non-country is Transdniestria, a strip of land sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine.

The non-vote is a poll about its future – by some counts the 11th since the Transdniestria authorities declared independence from Moldova proper in 1990. But no credible outsiders will observe it. The outcome is not in doubt.

It is also a non-vote because the question is oddly phrased. Voters are asked to support either the leadership’s current line, of independence leading to ‘association’ with the Russian federation, or to rejoin Moldova. That is not a mandate for real talks about the future, but a rejection of them. It’s the same old dreary story of posturing and deadlock.

What is new, however, is the energetic efforts by the Trandsniestrian authorities to make their case in English, online. When I last visited the Transdniestrian capital, Tiraspol, back in 2001, it was an internet-free zone.

Now that’s changed. There’s tiraspoltimes.com (published by an elusive Irishman), pridnestrovie.net, visitpmr.com and transdniestria.com. They are well-written – mostly by native-speakers of English – well-designed, and well-targetted at outsiders whose sympathy with the underdog might lead them to support a self-declared state struggling against the disdain of the international community.

What puzzles me, though, is who is behind this. Earlier this summer, in two articles for The Economist, I raised some questions about another outfit supporting Transdniestria, the self-described International Council for Democratic Institutions and State Sovereignty (ICDISS). This had published a heavily-footnoted report, in grand lawyerly style, about the legal basis for Transdniestrian independence. This report was cited by the sites above, and others in Russia, as a sign that western opinion was coming round to the Transdniestrian viewpoint.

Trouble was, the ICDISS had no phone number, address, legal status – and no identifiable funding, history or personnel. The distinguished international lawyers cited as sources disclaimed any involvement. Its excuses (provided only by email) were threadbare. Every trail that might prove its prior existence goes cold, or looks alarmingly like an outright forgery.
At first I thought I smelled a Kremlin disinformation campaign. But on closer examination that seemed too flattering. The steely professionals of the Yasenevo ‘sanatorium’ (as the Russian Foreign Intelligence headquarters in southern Moscow is nicknamed) would be ashamed of such amateurish efforts, so easily exposed by a few clicks of a journalist’s mouse. The fingerprints were of cowboys, not colonels.

It seems more likely that the ICDISS is a bunch of lightweight opportunists in Washington DC, paid for by tycoons and goons in Transdniestria, perhaps with the encouragement of sympathisers in Moscow. The same money probably pays for the other websites, and also subsidises ‘Breakthrough’, a local youth movement that apes similar pro-Kremlin efforts in Russia. Coincidentally or not, similar stunts are being pulled in the Caucasus and the Baltics.

Fake think-tanks, spurious reports and manufactured protest movements were common currency for both sides in the old Cold War; now they are popping up in the new one. Unprecedented money, effort and brainpower are now going into pro-Russian mischief-making in Europe’s backyard, to general indifference.

Whether you see it as merely entertaining, or outright sinister, the information war disguises hard questions for both sides. Once the European Union admits Romania, the question of what to do with next-door Moldova – and therefore of Transdniestria – cannot be dodged. And what does Russia really want? So far, it has maintained Transdniestria as a lucrative irritant.

But ambiguity has its limits. Transdniestria wants to become another Kaliningrad. Does the Kremlin want that? And if not, what? // Edward Luca's Blog


Publication date: 01 September 2006   

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