But it needs to be prepared
The heads of CIS Governments will meet in Chisinau at the end of this week. Concurrently, Vladimir Putin will pay a working visit to the Moldovan capital. This will be the first visit to Moldova by a top Russian leader in the last five years. That is, if one does not count the cancelled flight to Chisinau in 2003, when Putin learned shortly before boarding the plane that the Moldovan President would not, after all, sign the plan for settlement of the Transdnestr conflict that had been prepared at the Kremlin and agreed with the Moldovan leadership.
That event marked the beginning of by no means the best period in Russian-Moldovan relations. It ended on a promising note, as Putin's presidency was drawing to a close.
Today, Chisinau is confident that, having moved from the Kremlin to the White House, Putin has not forgotten the notorious "Kozak memorandum" that outlined the guidelines for the settlement of the Transdnestr conflict. Thus, in the eyes of the Moldovan leadership and the people of Chisinau, Putin's visit upstages the summit of the CIS heads of state. More journalists have been allocated to cover his meeting with Voronin than the final briefing of the Prime Ministers. Transdnestr will be the main topic discussed by the Presidents. The status of the problem has been upgraded by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who named it as a priority in his address to the Federal Assembly.
Chisinau took Medvedev's words about the Transdnestr settlement seriously. It concluded that Russia intended to return to the peacekeeping position it occupied in the mid-1990s. In other words, it claimed the role of the main, if not the only (without the EU and the US) mediator and guarantor. After the events in South Ossetia, nobody has any doubts that Russia will fulfil its promise. The question is, when?
Moldovan leaders expect that the smokescreen that surrounds everything connected with unofficial talks between Moscow and Chisinau will be lifted after Putin's talk with Voronin. The main intrigue is whether Putin will surrender Smirnov, our sources in the circles close to the Moldovan President say. Igor Smirnov, the President of Transdnestr, has vexed the Kremlin by his intransigence, a source at the Russian President's Office says.
He refuses to have direct talks with Voronin, although he has promised Medvedev that he will do so. If the issue of the resignation of the Transdnestr leader is important, however, it is crucial largely for the Moldovan side. Russia will use him as a bargaining chip in a more serious trade-off that has to do with the prospect of Moldova's integration into NATO and the preservation of the Russian military presence in that region.
This was confirmed by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's recent visit to Moldova, when he flew to Chisinau at Voronin's invitation before Putin's visit. In addition, Mr Scheffer said publicly that NATO would not press Moldova to renounce its neutral status and would develop cooperation with that country under the Partnership for Peace programme. The Moldovan leader said his country would like to be a member of the EU while staying outside of NATO. In fact, this was said for the sake of Putin. Now, the settlement of the conflict hinges on whether Putin trusts these declarations. It has to be borne in mind that in November 2003, before his meeting with Voronin that was hailed as Russia's peacekeeping triumph, the NATO Secretary-General had spoken with the Moldovan President, who admitted that he could not afford to not heed his words.
The upcoming meeting between Putin and Voronin will take place in a different context. The price of the issue is different: if the Putin-Voronin talks draw a blank, it would render meaningless the Medvedev-Voronin talks and the entire Russian peacekeeping mission, whose revival, judging from Medvedev's address, is one of Russia's key tasks in the post-Soviet era.
The important thing is to calculate everything and make good preparations, because everything today points towards a settlement. Most parties involved in the conflict want peace.