Moldova, 11 April 2023 (TDI): On Monday, April 10, the President of Moldova urged her citizens to attend a sizable outdoor rally the next month to support her efforts to integrate Moldova into Europe.
Moldava, one of the poorest nations in Europe, is sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. President Maia Sandu has consistently criticised Russia’s involvement in the conflict there. Missile fragments that were launched during the crisis in Ukraine have fallen in Moldova.
Since Sandu gained government in 2020 with a vow to oppose collaboration and move closer to Europe, the nation has received considerable Western support.
In a televised speech, Sandu said that he wanted to “show the whole world that the citizens of Moldova want peace and democracy in their country and want Moldova to become a part of the European Union.”
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Sandu claimed that the state, home to 2.5 million people, was at a turning point and that its future depended on communal effort.”I am making this plea because, in crucial situations, people other than politicians make crucial judgements. People make important decisions during Great National Assemblies, she remarked.
The moment is now for Moldovans to demonstrate our capacity to uphold democracy and the rule of law. We shall demonstrate that this is the course we have chosen in the Great National Assembly on May 21 because we are Europeans.
Although Igor Dodon, the pro-Russian president she beat in 2020, is still viewed as her only true challenger for the position, Sandu now enjoys a significant advantage in polls. Dodon was chosen on Monday to serve as one of the Socialist Party’s opposition leaders.
The country has been a part of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and “Greater Romania” at various points in its history. Although Russian is still widely used, Romanian was declared the country’s official language by its parliament last month.
30 years after a brief conflict pitting it against the army of the newly established Moldova, the nation is still plagued by the presence of Transnistria, a pro-Russian separatist statelet.
In Transnistria, there are still some 1,500 Russian “peacekeepers,” and the region’s officials claim Ukraine is attempting to remove them. Likewise, Moldova accuses Russia of attempting to undermine its stability.
Sandu’s pro-Western actions have drawn criticism from Moscow, and on Monday Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, condemned NATO’s proposals for stronger collaboration with Moldova. Let’s hope that there are still political forces in Moldova who can see that a closer relationship with NATO might result in a loss of sovereignty, stated Zakharova.
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