CHISINAU – A senior official of the Transnistrian administration claimed Tuesday that Moldova is preparing a security crackdown on the autonomous region of Gagauzia with the eventual aim of paving the way for Romania to absorb the country, allegations the Moldovan government has not confirmed and that reflect the longstanding framing Moscow and its proxies have applied to Moldova’s European alignment.
Vitaly Safonov, the parliamentary commissioner for relations with state authorities in Transnistria, the pro-Russia breakaway territory on Moldova’s eastern flank, made the claims in remarks reported by Russian state wire RIA Novosti on Tuesday. Safonov offered no evidence and the Moldovan government did not respond to RIA Novosti’s request for comment by the time of publication.
Gagauzia is a small, predominantly Turkic and Orthodox Christian autonomous region in southern Moldova whose leadership has been openly sympathetic to Russia throughout Moldova’s accelerating European integration since 2022. The Gagauz governor, Evghenia Gutsul, has positioned the region as a counterweight to Chisinau’s pro-EU government, and has traveled to Moscow on multiple occasions. In 2023, Gagauzia held an unofficial referendum that showed overwhelming support for closer ties with Russia rather than the EU, a result the central government dismissed as illegitimate.
Chisinau has taken steps to assert greater central authority over the region in recent years, including blocking some of Gutsul’s travel in connection with sanctioned entities. Those steps have been described by Moldovan authorities as lawful enforcement measures against officials with ties to sanctioned networks, and by Russian and Transnistrian officials as political persecution of a pro-Russia community.
Safonov’s claim that Moldova is preparing a full crackdown fits a pattern of Russian and Transnistrian messaging that frames Moldovan state authority as external pressure on Russian-aligned communities within the country. Moldova’s accession negotiations with the European Union began in June 2024 and have since advanced. Romania has been among the most vocal EU members supporting Moldovan membership, and Chisinau and Bucharest have deepened cooperation on infrastructure, energy, and border management.
Romania’s absorption of Moldova, as described by Safonov, has no institutional or legal basis in any document the EU or the Romanian government has proposed. The suggestion is a consistent feature of Russian and Transnistrian political communication about Moldova’s European path, which frequently characterizes EU membership as a precursor to the loss of Moldovan sovereignty to Romania, a characterization both governments in Chisinau and Bucharest reject. Eastern Europe’s political landscape has shifted sharply since 2022, with countries like Hungary ousting its president in a post-Orban purge that underscores the fragility of illiberal political arrangements across the continent.
The context in which Safonov is speaking matters. Transnistria is a Russia-backed territory that declared independence from Moldova in 1990 but is not recognized by any United Nations member state. Russian peacekeeping troops have been stationed there since a 1992 ceasefire agreement. Its political officials have consistently aligned their public statements with Moscow’s framing on issues affecting Moldova and the wider region, a framing that has intensified as Russian military operations have escalated across the broader neighborhood.
What is verifiable: Moldova has increased legal and administrative pressure on officials with documented ties to sanctioned networks. Gagauzia’s leadership has resisted that pressure and sought to deepen its own relationship with Moscow. The degree to which Chisinau’s actions constitute a crackdown, rather than the exercise of lawful state authority, is a question of political framing that Safonov’s statement does not resolve, and that the Moldovan government’s response, if any, would need to address.
