MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Monday it was worried about the state of affairs in Moldova’s breakaway Transdniestria region, where it said Ukraine and other European countries were stirring up the situation.
Moscow last week told the West that it would view any actions that threatened Russian peacekeepers in Transdniestria as an attack on Russia itself, a warning that came amid increased concerns in Moldova, a small ex-Soviet republic located between Romania and Ukraine, of a possible Russian threat.
Moldova’s pro-European president, Maia Sandu, this month accused Moscow of plotting a coup, something Russia denied.
“Naturally, the situation in Transdniestria is the subject of our closest attention and a reason for our concern,” Peskov told reporters. “The situation is unsettled, it is being provoked, provoked from outside.
“But we know that our opponents in the Ukrainian regime, the Kyiv regime, as well as those in European countries, are capable of various types of provocation.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed Moscow’s assertion that Ukraine wants to take over the region, while Moldova sad there was no truth to the allegations.
Vadim Krasnoselsky, the self-styled president of Transdniestria, had earlier described the situation in the region as tense, but urged people to remain calm and said that citizens would be informed immediately should any threat of danger arise, the Russian state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Jake Cordell; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
