Moldova

Moldova A country inhabited by a majority (65 per cent) of Moldovans (of Romanian ethnicity), with a substantial minority of Ukrainians and Russians (13 per cent each of the total population) in the east, and of Gagauzy (3.5 per cent of the total population) in the south. It became an Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic within the USSR in 1924, and reached its present territory in 1940, when Stalin added to it Romanian areas of northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, in line with the Hitler–Stalin Pact. It was occupied by Romanian troops 1941–4, but was officially recognized in its entirety as part of the USSR in 1947. It declared its independence from the moribund Soviet Union days after the August coup, on 27 August 1991.

When the Moldovan People's Front, which advocated reunion with Romania, won the 1992 parliamentary elections with 40 per cent of the vote, tensions emerged within the country's national minorities. The Gagausian minority declared its opposition to Romanian rule and its desire for greater autonomy, which was granted on 23 December 1994, mainly because its small size posed no threat to Moldova's territorial integrity.

Matters were more complicated with regard to its Ukrainian and Russian minorities, which lived mostly on the 10-mile wide and 100-mile long stretch on the left bank of the River Dnestr. They declared this the sovereign Republic of Dnestr (also known as Transdnestr) on 2 September 1990. This was not recognized by Moldova, and led to ongoing confrontations with neighbouring Ukraine, as well as Russia, which continued to have some 5,000 troops stationed in the Dnestr area. Throughout the 1990s, politics were extremely unstable, with frequent changes of government. This led to an inability to introduce economic reforms, so that the country was unable to prevent severe economic decline.

The coincidence of political and economic crisis came to a head in 2000, when Parliament was unable to find the necessary majority to elect a President. In response, the outgoing President dissolved parliament. The ensuing elections produced a victory for the pro-Russian communists under Vladimir Voronin, who obtained a constitutional majority in parliament. Voronin moved to promote the rights of the Russian minority and establish special political ties with Russia, much to the concern of the Romanian ethnic majority.