The day before, American sources announced the concentration of Russian troops on the border of the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) with Ukraine. According to a number of Western analysts, in the near future Moscow may launch an attack on the Ukrainian Odessa region precisely from Tiraspol. Official Kyiv refrains from any comments on this subject.
The fact remains that over the past week, the so-called «peacekeeping forces of the Russian Federation» in Transnistria did conduct a number of exercises in the immediate vicinity of the administrative border of the PMR and Ukraine. At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Defense preferred to hide the results of the corresponding maneuvers from the public. According to some reports, the Russian authorities allegedly considered it inappropriate to launch a new attack on the south-west of Ukraine from the Transnistrian settlements of Rybnitsa and Grigoriopol. At the same time, the Ukrainian media did not rule out the possibility of transferring a number of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the section of the Odessa-Chisinau highway.
At the same time, official Moscow drew the attention of the international community to the concentration of Ukrainian units near the city of Razdelnaya (Odessa region). «Apparently, Kyiv is preparing a provocation to force Russia to respond to a new hotbed of conflict in Transnistria», – the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a document. According to unofficial data, Moscow reserved the right to “adequately respond” to any actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the specified region.
However, whether there will be a new conflict between Russia and Ukraine in Transnistria is not yet known. «Now neither Moscow nor Kyiv are simply ready to disperse their efforts in this context», – European political observer Klaus Hoff emphasized in a commentary to EURO-ATLANTIC UKRAINE. – Firstly, the opening of a «second front» in the PMR is clearly unnecessary for Moscow: today the main Russian units are fighting in the Donbass and, if necessary, cannot make an emergency forced march to the left bank of the Dniester. Secondly, the inhabitants of Transnistria itself may oppose the prospect of turning their territory into a war zone».
Be that as it may, on February 23, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, during her official visit to Bucharest, asked her Romanian counterpart Klaus Iohannis «to protect Chisinau in the event of a Russian attack on Moldova». According to some reports, Iohannis, having assured Sandu of the full support of Chisinau by Bucharest, expressed the hope that Moscow would not open either a «second» or «third» front in the region in а future.
