A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Kyiv authorities closed all their border crossing points along the country’s 400-kilometre boundary with the breakaway region of Transnistria.
Supply routes were disrupted and the prices of imported goods rose immediately.
“I haven’t seen a single product which arrived without a 30 per cent price rise, as a minimum,” said Elena, manager of a shop in Transnistria’s main city, Tiraspol.
“Ukrainian goods used to fill a little over a half of the shelves,” she explained. “Now, there’s no Ukrainian beer, confectionery and almost the entire line of ketchups. I don’t know what it’s about. Perhaps the factories were bombed, or there were shipment issues. Before, it took 1,500 kilometres to deliver [food and other products], now it can take 3,000 or even 3,500. So all this affects the prices and hits customers in their pockets.”
After the border point closures, access to the breakaway region was, for the first time, only possible through territories controlled by the Moldovan government.
“The changes are significant. Now, we [the state of Moldova] have full control over trade flow, travel, traffic and communications between the province and the rest of the world,” Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration, Oleg Serebrian, said in April.
But the border closures have also sparked new tensions between Moldova and the breakaway authorities in Transnistria, a small, unrecognised territory with a population of just under half a million. Since its war with Moldovan government forces in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Transnistria has remained in a state of ‘frozen conflict’. It also hosts a Russian military presence that Moldova sees as a potential threat amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The leader of the Transnistrian region of Moldova, Vadim Krasnoselski (L) speaks to the media after meeting with the President of Moldova Igor Dodon (R) in Condrita village, at the presidential residence, 36 Km West of Chisinau, Moldova, 28 July 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/DUMITRU DORU
One of the rows caused by the border checkpoint closure was sparked by problems with the delivery of medical supplies. Before, most of Transnistria’s medications went through Ukraine, but now all products must be delivered through Moldova, which has resulted in substantial delays.
Chisinau officials say the reason is that now suppliers must get import approvals before shipment. But the Moldovan and Transnistrian state registers of medicines and medical products are markedly different, so licensing procedure times increased significantly. The Tiraspol authorities accused Chisinau of “inactivating the import of medicines to Transnistria”.
Initially, the drugs were replaced with analogs, while the Transnistrian Minister of Health, Christina Albul, said in mid-April that the region had enough medicines to last for two months. On April 28, Transnistrian leader Vadim Krasnoselsky met Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration, Oleg Serebrian, and a compromise was agreed.
The disruption of supply chains had a considerable impact on the availability as well as the price of food products. In just one example, Ukrainian salt disappeared from the shelves and a Turkish product which is three times more expensive replaced it.
According to figures published by the Transnistrian authorities in early May, prices for yeast, margarine and some types of fish jumped up by a third. Bananas, corn grits, chocolate, rice and sugar were hit by a price hike of 20 per cent. Prices of various other products rose 15 per cent.
This has seriously affected people in Transnistria, a poor region where the average monthly salary in the region is about 240 euros and monthly pension payments are around 85 euros. However, food supplies have continued despite initial pessimism about how the system would cope.
“For the first month [of the war in Ukraine], we were afraid of going hungry here, because the wholesale depots were empty, or they suspended distribution to prevent hunger, maybe. Now, we have everything. The market is full,” said Elena, adding that even Russian goods, which had become unavailable in previous months, are back on sale again.
Summing up the economic impact, Denis Nedelko, a businessman who heads the Transnistrian business association Most, said that the conflict has had several consequences for the region.
Nedelko explained that firstly, goods have to travel much further to reach Transnistria, so “the cost of delivery has increased significantly”.
A woman casts her vote at a polling station in City Hall, during the elections of the Governor (Bashkan) of Autonomous Territorial Unit Gagauzia, at 112 km South from Chisinau, Moldova, on 22 March 2015. Like in the breakaway region Transnistria, there are strong sympathies for Russia in Gagauzia, in which an estimate 170,000 ethnic Gagauz Turk people live. The dominant language spoken in the region is Russian. Photo: EPA/DUMITRU DORU
“Secondly, the Ukrainian market was closed to Transnistria. It has become difficult, almost impossible to bring goods from Ukraine. We are now focused on the markets of Poland, Germany, Romania, Turkey. This is also connects to price rises,” he said.
“Thirdly, Ukrainian ports closed. Now goods that came by sea go to Romania. This is more expensive and takes longer.”
‘Lives have been put on hold’
Fuel as well as food have has substantially increased in price. In February, a litre of diesel or petrol cost about 95 euro cents and 1.12 euros, respectively. By the end of June, prices had risen to 1.5 euros for diesel and 1.55 for petrol. This has had a knock-on effect for other sectors of the economy.
“When I go to a site to take measurements, the customer is supposed to pay for the petrol, and just an hour ago I lost an order because of the fuel prices,” said Andrei, a construction specialist.
“The quantity of orders has reduced despite the beginning of the construction season. Compared to the same periods in preceding years, there is no activity,” he added, explaining that the price of construction materials also increased and logistics became more complicated.
“To say we’ve ended up with less [economic] activity would be an understatement,” said Yuri, a car repair shop owner.
“It’s obviously [dropped] by 80 per cent. Lives have been put on hold. It’s not because of a lack of cash. It’s because of an abrupt recession.”
Before the war, Yuri was going to specialise in repairing battery-driven vehicles. His target market was Ukraine.
“I invested a lot. I bought equipment, I refurbished the workshop, I bought some damaged vehicles. But I only repaired one of them before the war started. The others are on hold now,” he said.
“If I knew that there would be a war, I would have just sat about idly on the sofa. That would have been the best business plan ever. I lost a lot. The money has not gone up in flames, the equipment is still there, but it has become a deadweight.”
Blasts put region on red alert
The general nervousness in Transnistria was further heightened after attacks on local security agencies’ offices and radio towers in the north of the region in late April, as well as gunfire near the village of Kolbasna, where a large Russian military depot is located.
These incidents caused the Transnistrian authorities to declare a red-level terror alert. Checkpoints were set up at the entrances to cities, schools switched to online teaching and cancelled final examinations, public events were restricted, and the annual May 9 military parade on the main square in Tiraspol to mark Victory Day in World War II was cancelled.
A general view of the checkpoint at the border of Moldova and the breakaway Transnistrian Republic, near Bender, 65 km Vest from Chisinau, 17 April 2014. Transnistria is not recognized by any sovereign nation. It split from Moldova in 1992 following a two-year war that erupted as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Photo: EPA/STR
There were fears that Transnistria might get dragged into Moscow’s war in Ukraine, particularly after a Russian military commander said that seizing control over southern Ukraine would “provide another access point to Transnistria”, where Russian military troops are based, and after Moldova announced that it is turning determinedly to the West and seeking to become a candidate to join the European Union.
The tense situation in Transnistria prompted some families to leave their homes in late April and early May. Elena Bobkova, a social scientist and executive from the Novy Vek (New Era) Tiraspol Centre for Analytical Research, said she believes that in the second half of April, five per cent of Tiraspol’s 130,000 inhabitants left the city. “The people of Tiraspol were terrified,” Bobkova said
On May 25, the alert level was reduced to amber, which means large-scale events were allowed again. The amber alert was due to remain in force until June 25.
Meanwhile, people in Transnistria, which has strong ties to Moscow, argued on social media about whether it was right or wrong to wear pro-Russian insignia. In early April, a young man called Aleksey Lozov from Tiraspol published an Instagram story proclaiming that he had “reprimanded and shamed” a girl who had sewed the letter ‘Z’, the symbol of Russian invading forces, in the orange-and-black colours of the ribbon of Saint George, the symbol of Russian proxy forces in eastern Ukraine, onto her bag.
After members of pro-Russian online groups noticed the story, many of them targeted Lozov with disapproving comments and messages. A week later, he published a video message saying that he was “extremely exhausted with those messages and the negative information that I had to go through” and that the situation was hurting his feelings and affecting his health.
There have also been incidents offline. On Victory Day, May 9, a driver saw a car decorated with Russian flags and a ‘Z’ symbol in a parking lot. According to a report on the local interior ministry website, the driver approached the car’s owner and “expressed his dissatisfaction with strong words and then hit him”. Eyewitnesses saw the fight and called the police, and the driver now faces a fine for disorderly behaviour.
In another incident, a man from Tiraspol was sentenced to five days of administrative detention for insulting the Transnistrian Ministry of State Security, the MGB, according to Stepan Popovski, a lawyer for the Transnistrian human rights organisation Apriori.
“He went to a fabric store, wanting to sew a Ukrainian flag and hang it on the balcony at his place, saying ‘Let the MGB go crap itself,’” said Popovski.
“In the framework of the case, a search was conducted at his house, and computers and devices were seized. Representatives of the Transnistrian authorities, Moldova, the OSCE, Russia, Ukraine, the EU, the US and the UN were notified about this case. But so far there has been no clear public reaction from most of them – only Moldova condemned it. Meanwhile, his administrative detention ended on June 15, but he has not yet been released,” the human rights lawyer added.
There have also been more serious incidents. Early in the morning of May 13, unknown people threw two Molotov cocktails into the military enlistment office in Tiraspol.
No one was injured and the damage was insignificant – the window was broken and the windowsill burnt – but the incident caused another row between the Transnistrian authorities and Moldova. Tiraspol accused the Moldavan special services of being responsible, but Chisinau denied this.
As the war in Ukraine continues without an end in sight, sociologist Alexander Gonchar said that the polarisation of Transnistrian society is likely to lead to more emigration from the region as violent incidents cause unease among the population.
“For a certain part of society, the process of emigration can be spontaneous in nature, and such people tend to return as the situation stabilises somewhat. Another part of society perceives these signals as something symbolic, prompting a decision to emigrate long-term,” Gonchar said.
He said that Transnistria was already seeing “the leeching away of the economically active population, the so-called ‘creative class’”, with rising costs for industry and a growing deficit of specialists in sectors like IT causing yet more problems.
“Obviously, there are no positive consequences for the region in this,” he concluded.
