Aleksei Ostrovsky, head of the Duma’s Committee for CIS Affairs has recommended that the Russian Government create diplomatic missions at the territories of three unrecognized republics – Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Trans-Dneister (Pridnestrovie).

According to Interfax, the document, which has been prepared for discussion and further confirmation in the Duma, recommends that Russia work to “achieve representatives’ participation of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Pridnestrovie in all international organizations and forums, where their interests are discussed and touched.”

Also it was recommended that Russia should “resist firmly any attempts of external pressure – political, economical or military - concerning these three republics” and that the Russian Parliament suggest to the Russian Federation government that it“maintain existing forms of peacekeeping operations to settle conflicts around Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Pridnestrovie based on mutual conventions”.

According to the report:

“Nowadays the situation in the zone of Georgia-Abkhazia and Georgia-Ossetia conflicts becomes more and more complicated. Politics realized by Tbilisi is extravagant, unpredictable and sometimes destructive. Georgia is trying to break existing algorithims of conflict settlement and compromise the Russian peacekeepers’ mission. This gives a reason to Abkhazians and Ossetians to believe that Georgian administration chooses military option”.

The report’s authors note that mandate of peacekeeping forces, which are operating in the territory of the conflicts between Georgia and Abkhazia, Georgia and Ossetia, only allows them to “split the rivals, maintain regime of security and stop the fire”. To change this mandate would require the agreement of all sides. But neither Abkhazia, nor South Osetia have given their agreement, because they are afraid the departure of Russian peacekeepers would lead to destabilization of the situation in the region.

The authors of the project believe that the precedent set in Kosovo, wich recently declared its independence will have consequences for other “frozen conflicts.” If these conflicts remain “frozen,” this will be provoke new stage of confrontation between conflict sides. And this confrontation will be negative for the population.

Nugzar Ashuba, the head of Parliament of Abkhazia, speaking in the Duma, asked Russia to recognize independence of this self-proclaimed republic as soon as possible. He told Duma members that:

“The Russian Federation now (after the Kosovo incident) has enough reasons to declare the independence of Abkhazia all over the world. By doing this Russia will establish its international weight.”

Ashuba also mentioned that the Georgian government must be interested in recognition new status of republic, because Abkhazia has proved that it was able to survive as an independent entity.

“We think that if Georgia recognizes independence of Abkhazia, its government will solve many other socio-economical problems and the Georgian people will be free from waiting for war every moment.”

The rest of the Duma’s discussion was closed to journalists, but according to one source, some Duma deputies consider that Russia has to support these self-proclaimed republics, because they will never be part of Georgia again.

It is the time to remember words of President Putin during the visit of Angela Merkel last week. He reminded us that case of Kosovo would have a lot of consequences for the world.

Now we have the beginning. Who is next?

It’s been a busy weekend for post-Soviet election watchers with not one, but two elections taking place - a referendum on a new constitution in Nagorno-Karabakh, and a Presidential election in Transdniester.

Nagorno Karabah

In Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave of (mostly) Armenians stuck in the middle of Azerbaijan, they’ve been voting in a referendum on their new constitution.

The constitution, which describes Nagorno-Karabakh as a “sovereign, independent state” is likely to boost hopes of independence from Azerbaijan.

Turnout was apparently above 80%, and the new constitution is expected to be approved by an overwhelming majority.

But, guess who’s unhappy with the election?

[T]he government of Azerbaijan says the referendum is being held under an illegal military occupation of Azeri territory.

This election was observed by monitors from the EU. They thought the election was well organised, free and fair.

Interfax have dug up the following comment though:

Luciano Ardesi, an observer from Italy and head of the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, said the referendum observed all voting standards.

“What the people of Nagorno Karabakh did today is quite legitimate. The international community must recognize the right of the people of Nagorno Karabakh to either establish its own state or join Armenia,” he said.

From the wording of the Interfax article, it’s not clear if Ardesi is an official spokesman for the EU election monitors, or just some random supporter of independence for Nagorno-Karabakh who happened to be in town while they were holding a referendum. If the former, then the EU are going to have some explaining to do, if the latter then Interfax will be the ones who end up with egg on their faces.

Transdniester

Meanwhile, over in the tiny sliver of Moldvoa that doesn’t really like being a part of Moldova they’ve been electing a President this weekend. Igor Smirnov, the incumbent, is likely to romp home in an election that the cynic in me thinks probably won’t be all that free or all that fair.

Smirnov plans to use his ‘victory’ to push for union with Russia:

“We have defined a scheme: at first, this is referendum, then elections and later the achievement of the goal set at the referendum - integration with Russia. This shows once again that we are building our own state. Democracy is not drawn, it can be born,” he said.

Russia likes Transdniester’s pro-Russian government, but enough to contemplate a formal union? Fat chance.

The Moldovan government, as you’d imagine, isn’t all that impressed with the democratic credentials of Transdniester’s election:

Moldova’s Foreign Ministry has called the election in Trans-Dniester “illegal,” and has asked other countries not to send international monitors. The ballot was observed, however, by dozens of Russian and Ukrainian lawmakers.

No idea what the Ukrainians thought of the election. But the Russian observers thought it was magnificent.

Two Russian citizens, who were part of a CIS election monitoring mission to Moldova have been jailed. 

The representatives of the CIS-EMO international organization, who were detained Saturday night on the border between Moldova and the Russian-speaking Dniester region for allegedly being involved in a fight, were immediately charged with violating the administrative code.

The Russian government is, of course, outraged.

"Alarming reports have arrived from Chisinau about the local administration’s provocative moves with regards to Russians citizens - head of a mission of the international non-governmental organization for monitoring elections in countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States Alexei Kochetkov and a member of this organization Vladimir Lebyodkin. On July 9, they were detained on the outskirts of Bendery in an act of crude lawlessness," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"No official explanations were provided following this yet another act of crude lawlessness, despite the Russian embassy’s repeated inquiries to the Moldovan Foreign Ministry," the release says.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow demands that the Russian citizens detained in Moldova be immediately released. "Otherwise, responsive measures will be taken. The Moldovan authorities must take note of this," the ministry said.

Remember the Moldovan election back in early March?  The Communist Party won re-election in the parliamentary election, following which the newly elected members of Parliament vote for their President in early April.  Brussels Gonzo has the latest news on the political maneuvering in one of the former Soviet Union’s quietest corners.

Those few of you who have been following the story may recall that
the ruling Communist Party won the recent elections with 56 seats out
of 101 in the parliament. However, President Vladimir Voronin will
require 61 votes to get re-elected by the parliament on 4 April. The
leaders of the two opposition factions who between them won the other
45 parliamentary seats pledged that they would boycott the vote, thus
ensuring that no president would be elected and triggering new
parliamentary elections.

Well, it’s
not difficult to work out the political mathematics. If you’re an
opposition MP, do you vote for new elections in which you might lose
your seat, or see if you can get a deal from the President?

Former
speaker of the parliament Dumitru Diacov has found an answer to the
equation by splitting with the larger coalition as part of which he was
elected, and now leads a faction of 8 MPs. It would be very foolish at
this point to bet against President Voronin’s re-election in ten days’
time, probably by 64 votes to 0. […]

Moldova will almost certainly sink back into torpor, with occasional sabre-rattling across the Dniester.

 I agree with his analysis of what is about to happen in the upcoming vote, although I don’t think Moldova will sink back into torpor as a result.  Sure, Moldova will drop off the news radar again - it is, after all, about as far out of the way as it is possible to get in Europe.  But the re-election of Voronin is likely to provide the stability that Moldova needs to push its case for closer integration with the EU. 

The Communist Party in Moldova is, despite its name, not committed to the communist ideology.  Instead, it is committed to free market reform and is actually doing a pretty good job of driving the Moldovan economy forwards.  There is some corruption, but not at a significantly higher level than, say, Poland or Hungary in the early 1990s.  Moldova isn’t ready to actually join the EU yet, but it is ready to begin properly integrating itself into the European economy, rather than the CIS economy. 

Neither of the two opposition parties is strong enough to put forward a Presidential candidate of their own, so any President other than Voronin would have to be a compromise candidate.  And, ultimately, if a re-election was called as a result of the Parliament’s inability to choose a President, the only consequence would be months of political turmoil followed by a hung parliament which would, in turn, elect as President…. you guessed it, a compromise candidate.   The country would effectively be putting business on hold for months, and there is every chance that it would elect a less effective President as a result.

Voronin, at least, has the support of a small parliamentary majority.  He can push Moldova in the direction it needs to go.  And, as there is very little that Russia can offer the Moldovan economy today, that direction is West.

So, we’ve heard the OSCE’s views on the elections in Moldova - they were in line with international standards. 

But what did CIS observers think?  You know, the observers that the Moldovan’s decided not to invite because they thought they were Russians in disguise.  Well, Interfax is on the case, in its succinctly entitled article CIS observers: Moldova govt rigs parliamentary elections.  It appears that, despite being told not to come, they got a close enough view to make some pretty telling observations:

"The offenses committed by the authorities in organizing and carrying out the elections enables us to say that they were capable of exercising a substantial effect on the results of the elections," Alexei Kochetkov, head of temporary mission for the CIS Election Monitoring Organization (CIS-EMO), said.

In giving examples, Kochetkov said the observers "were alarmed by a ballot paper game" where more than enough ballots were brought to a village that actively supported the Communists but less than enough were brought to villages where "revolutionary sentiments predominate."

Just in case you were in any doubt - the villages with ‘revolutionary sentiments’ would be the ones that were more likely to vote for pro-Russian candidates.

Lyndon accompanied his Moldovan wife as she voted at the Moldovan embassy in Moscow this weekend.  Following reports that there were 700,000 Moldovan expats living in Russia, few of whom planned to vote for the Communists, Lyndon wanted to see for himself what was happening:

I am a bit skeptical of this figure, mainly because it was used in a Channel 1 news report (not the one linked to above, but the one I saw later in the evening) to suggest that the Moldovan government was trying to suppress the vote of Moldovans living in Russia, with the assumption being that they would take a pro-Russian stance and therefore vote against Voronin. This was of course born out by an "exit poll" - scientifically conducted, no doubt, although I saw no pollsters at the voting station asking questions of people exiting - broadcast on Vremia, the results of which supposedly showed that 60% of the two to four thousand voters at the Moscow polling station voted for "opposition groups" and only 2% for Voronin’s party.

As usual, the picture I’ve posted here is Lyndon’s, just one of many from his photoessay.

Following their defeat in Sunday’s Moldovan parliamentary election, opposition parties have called off their plans to bring people out onto the streets of Chisnau to protest the result.  Instead, they plan to work through parliament to prevent Vladimir Voronin from being re-elected President.

Leaders of both opposition parties said Monday that they intended to boycott Parliament’s presidential vote in a bid to force a new election, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported. It was unclear, however, whether their statements were simply a negotiating tactic.

"Voronin will not be supported by my bloc," Chisinau Mayor Serafim Urechean, leader of Democratic Moldova, said at a news conference.

Iurie Rosca, leader of the Christian Democrats, argued that "conditions were unequal" in the election, Itar-Tass reported. But both leaders said they had dropped plans for postelection street protests, the news agency said.

The bottom line has to be that the public simply don’t feel cheated enough to come out onto the streets.   

See my previous post for more thoughts on why opposition parties are unlikely to be able to unite to prevent Voronin’s re-electiont.

The Communist Party, meanwhile, plans to re-brand itself. 

Voronin, who previously suggested that his party might change its name, on Monday said the Communists would reorganize along the lines of European parties.

"A special-task commission is already working on this issue," he said.

It’s a smart move, of course.  The name just gives out the wrong vibes to the world, especially to the EU.  The possession of a functioning free market is one of the key standards that any state aspiring to membership must meet and, although the Moldovan Communist Party of today promotes the free-markets and privatisation, the EU could never justify accepting a Communist state (even if it is in name only) into its club.  The EU is packed full, however, of ’social-democratic’ parties.

Final results are in from Sunday’s Moldovan elections. The Communist Party, as expected, triumphed, but not by as many votes as predicted. Here’s the breakdown of the three parties that forced their way over the five percent threshold and into 101-seat parliament.

• Communist Party:  46.1% / 56 seats
• Democratic Moldova Bloc: 28.4% / 24 seats
• Popular Party Christian Democratic: 9% / 11 seats

So, what next?  Well, so far, no sign of protests in the streets.  Moldovans seem pretty happy with the result.  The OSCE has reported that the elections were, "on the whole", up to OSCE standards, which doesn’t really give the opposition much to get their teeth into, even if they were united enough to do so.

The next big step is for the newly elected parliament to choose their next President.   This, according to Publius Pundit, is where things could get interesting again.  61 votes are needed to elect a President and, of course, the Communists are currently 5 votes down.  Vladimir Voronin, the current President, is going to have to do some deals if he wants to stay in charge and, if he can’t garner enough votes, there is the possibility that the Communists will lose their nerve and put forward a compromise candidate.  If the opposition can unite for long enough, Publius reckons, we could be in for a bonus election which would favour the opposition:

If 61 votes are not achieved for a candidate within three tries,
parliament is dissolved and a new parliamentary election is held. This
would potentially garner even more votes toward the opposition.

I’d say, though, that things seem to be very much in the Communist Party’s favour right now.  The two opposition parties are most definitely not united, and I don’t think they’ll be able to stand together through three rounds of voting, especially when the Communists start throwing incentives at them left, right, and centre.  Which they will.  And, even if the two party leaderships do manage to keep it together, think how much is going to be on offer to those five individual MPs to entice them to defect… 

Moldova’s parliamentary election is today.  Here’s a (very) basic outline for those of you unfamiliar with Moldova.

• The 101-seat parliament that is elected today will go on to elect the country’s President. 
• Moldova is currently governed by the Communist Party, which turned its back on Russia a year or so ago in favour of closer ties with the EU.
• The Communist Party is expected to defeat the divided opposition, although it may not win enough seats to elect the President without support from some opposition parties. 
• One of the wto main opposition parties - the Democratic Moldova Bloc - is fairly pro-Russian, the other - the Christian Democratic Popular Party - promises Ukrainian style protests. 
• The Trans-Dniester region, which is run by a criminal gang separate government and is currently policed by Russian peacekeepers, is not taking part in the election, although residents of the region are entitled to vote if they can get to a polling station. 

If you are looking for a slightly more comprehensive, but still quick-reading outline of the election, the BBC has a very good FAQ, and Scraps of Moscow provides its own eclectic guide to Moldovan internet resources, including links to all the major parties.

The BBC also has a report today about 100 Russians, claiming to be election observers, who have been barred from entry into Moldova.  Despite being told bluntly by Moldova that, while they were happy with OSCE observers, Russian and CIS election observers were not wanted, this group of Russians decided not to take the hint:

According to Russian television, the Russians who were detained on a train on Saturday wanted to ensure that the ballot was free and fair.

But the authorities claim they were not registered as monitors.

"These people said they were observers but they don’t have a single document to prove it," a government official told AFP news agency.

Check back over the next few days for election results, and any more breaking news as it happens.

What’s the plural for ‘Axis of Evil’?  There seem to be plenty out there these days. 

Kommersant claims to have discovered the latest one, and it’s right on the borders of Russia.  Axis of Evil Shaping Against Moscow, screams their headline.

And who are these scary evil-doers, you ask? 

Rose-orange Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova are establishing an anti-Russian tie-up to force Moscow from Caucasus and Pridnestrovie, analysts say quoted by the RBC news agency.r good measure

[The] three paties appear aggressively involved in negotiations.

The main highlights are forcing Russia from the Caucasus and
Pridnestrovie; establishment of transport corridors, going the round of
Russia. Therefore, the parties actually endeavor to create a sanitary
corridor to isolate Russia from Europe and Transcaucasia

Now this is just silly.  Of course these three countries would be more than happy to be able to establish transit corridors which circumvent Russia but, seriously, who in their right mind would call them evil? 

(Hat tip: Ultima Thule)
 

I’m currently busy pulling together this week’s news report and, although this item from Interfax didn’t quite make the cut, it was just too good not to pass on:

Lavrov surprised by Moldova’s reluctance to invite CIS election observers

MOSCOW. Feb 22 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was surprised by the Moldovan authorities’ reluctance to invite CIS observers to monitor the country’s parliamentary elections.

Moldova does, however, want OSCE and Council of Europe observers.

Can you imagine the hurt and suffering the poor man is going through as he ever so slowly comes to terms with the heartbreaking knowledge that there are people in former Soviet states that actually don’t trust Russia?