MOLDOVA – NATO’S SINKING “FRONTLINE STATE”

Corrupt to the core, Vlad Plahotniuk is the absolute power behind the façade of Moldova’s visible authorities.

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ur dear old friend, the loathsome Moldovan oligarch Vlad Plahotniuk, apparently ambitious to make a name for himself, perhaps even outshining his historical prototype of a few centuries ago, the other Vlad who is already embedded in regional lore, is back in the limelight.

Plahotniuk, be it recalled, until recently was the NATO/EU Johnny- on-the-spot in backwater Moldova, the impoverished former Soviet republic strategically located between Romania and the Ukraine. Moldova was envisaged already in the first stages of USSR’s disintegration to become the West’s forward position in the East, facing Russia. Plahotniuk was the designated local gendarme for that operation. But as not infrequently happens among gangsters, there has recently been a messy falling out between the West’s slimy local satrap and his foreign sponsors.

Toward the end of August, tens of thousands of Moldovans, fed up with Mr. P.’s and his cohorts’ misrule, demonstrated menacingly in the streets of the capital, Kishinev, for all the right things and “values,” notably including an independent judiciary, against corruption, and for doing away with oligarchical abuses. Interestingly, just shortly before the riots, Moldovan prime minister Pavel Filip conferred in Brussels with the president of the Council of Europe Donald Tusk and heard from the latter that Moldova is an important participant in EU’s Eastern Partnership and that he finds the level of support for EU among Moldovans entirely satisfactory.

As subsequent events suggested, however, Tusk was in fact quite out of touch. Four years after the signing of the EU Association Agreement, Moldovans’ erstwhile high hopes in the miraculous power of EU to improve their lives have dissipated, exactly like the billion euros in EU funds pumped into the country, supposedly to make it a better place, which are suspected to have found their way into Plahotniuk’s and his cronies’ offshore accounts. Regardless of Brussels’ touted infusions of economic assistance, Moldovans’ trust in EU currently stands at an embarrassing 38% low. By comparison, surveys show that barely one third of Germans (having experienced the marvels of EU membership) still trust the Union. Which makes Moldovans appear as anything but oddballs.

Over a long period of time, while it was still betting on Plahotniuk to advance its Moldovan agenda, Brussels was heaping praise on Moldova. As part of a steady drumbeat of platitudes, EU’s Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fuele articulated Brussel’s fervent wish to “build an independent, successful, and united Moldova as a strong partner to the European Union.” A tall order, indeed, considering that the subject of his desire is a wreck of a country. “The European Union is carefully, committedly, and actively drawing up a road map that takes into account Moldova’s European aspirations,” the Romanian foreign minister chimed in vaguely but flatteringly, noting also with somewhat menacing precision that this “includes Moldova’s internal reform process.”

But in fact, correct-sounding verbiage aside, as long as it thought that Plahotniuk was a viable local satrap, far from challenging Moldova’s corrupt system the European Union was keeping it afloat. One of the results was that for the most part the financial resources made available by the European Union ended up in cooperative private hands. It is unnecessary to speculate aloud whose.

One of the (probably intended) consequences of Moldova’s signing the EU Association Agreement and assuming the attendant obligations was that trade with Russia was significantly curtailed. In pre-Agreement days Moldova was marketing the bulk of its agricultural production, such as strawberries and wine, in Russia. That export market and the income that went with it has now largely vanished. According to Moldovan President Igor Dodon, his country has lost the Russian market without any EU compensating benefits. Moldova’s “free trade agreement” with Europe was a disaster, he noted wistfully.

So, if Dodon is president, why doesn’t he do something about it? Ah, but there’s the rub. He is merely the figurehead president. The de facto president of Moldova, as well as its prime minister, and supreme court, and parliament is – you guessed it – Vlad Plahotniuk.

Moldova is now reaping the bitter harvest of its partnership with the EU, in which it was embroiled by its crooked leaders. Democracy has turned into a pipe dream and the institutions of government are in a state of collapse. Statistics award Moldova the unenvied status of Europe’s poorest country and its citizens are predictably fleeing abroad en masse. Reforms are stagnating. However, European partners began expressing concern over these minor details only when their new man, Andrei Nastase, was blocked from becoming Kishinev’s new mayor after the Plahotniuk-controlled Supreme Court invalidated his by all accounts fair and square electoral victory.

Plahotniuk evidently took umbrage at Nastate’s nasty campaign program since one of its prominent planks was the dismantlement of the oligarchicy (one wonders how P. managed to decipher such a subtle allusion).

After their very own Frankenstein’s insolent rebuff to their mayoral candidate, EU officials are now pulling no punches, calling their former man Plahotniuk “traitor” and “notorious liar.” The wretched citizens of Moldova are now reduced to being stage extras in the drama of their country’s and their own lives. Their “choice” is between the puppet-on-the- skids Plahotniuk and the new political stars now being promoted by friendly Western interests, Nastase and the former education minister Maia Sandu, a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, if that means anything to anyone. She has declared that she will remain in public life until Plahotniuk is in prison and corruption is eradicated. Yeah, right. After she finishes the job in Moldova, she should move on to Washington.

So now European officials are refusing to have anything to do with their former protégé, the discredited and widely detested but still powerful Vlad Plahotniuk. They are shifting their Moldova casino chips to the Nastase/Sandu reserve team. As always in such situations, the regime may change, but the subservient, neo-colonial system must at all costs remain in place.

The European Union worked closely with Moldova’s corrupt political elite from the moment it was installed, following the demise of the Soviet Union. The oligarch Vlad Plahotniuk, whose depredations span that entire period until the present day, is a case in point. He is the absolute power behind the façade of Moldova’s visible authorities. It is interesting how he made his first steps on the road to wealth and power. His initial business venture in the chaos of post-Soviet Moldova in 1991 was human and specifically child trafficking. At the time, Plahotniuk was employed at a shelter for abandoned children. According to Moldovan psychologist and child care specialist Aurelia Balan-Cojocaru, Plahotniuk made his first million dollars by selling homeless and often raped minors of both sexes to foreign adoption agencies. Are we to believe that this is a detail in Plahotniuk’s career that Western intelligence agencies just “missed”?

Hardly likely. It is more probable that they welcomed it as a lever for blackmail and control. His sordid past subsequently posed no obstacle to developing a cozy relationship with many Western businessmen and politicians. Until they decided that he was a liability and had to go.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in Moldova in February 2019. Some see that as Moldova’s last chance, while others are skeptical of substantive change. The oligarchic mafia’s self-serving electoral “reform” is now bitterly criticized by Western devotees of the “rule of law” because it significantly handicaps their candidates, making it virtually impossible to wrest control of the country from one set of bad guys in order to “legitimately” pass it on to the other.
That may be an annoyance, but it is hardly a problem so insurmountable that a well-organized color revolution couldn’t solve it.