With the kind permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, InfoUkes Inc. has been given rights to electronically re-print these articles on our web site. Visit the RFE/RL Ukrainian Service page for more information. Also visit the RFE/RL home page for news stories on other Eastern European and FSU countries.
Return to Main RFE News Page
InfoUkes Home Page
Critics of earlier plans for Moldova's federalization as an instrument for solving the long-standing Transdniester conflict are likely to feel vindicated. They had warned against the dangers inherent in two earlier federalization proposals: one worked out by the OSCE at and following the Kyiv meeting of July 2002 and the follow-up proposal by Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin in February 2003.
But the Russian plan, nicknamed the "Kozak plan" after Dmitrii Kozak, the deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's administration who is its apparent "godfather," incorporates all the drawbacks against which federalization's critics have been warned, and adds new ones. Timing is also highly important, since the plan allows Moscow to show up at the forthcoming December OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Maastricht as the champion of peace rather than as in breach for the second consecutive year of fulfilling the obligation assumed at the OSCE summits in Istanbul in November 1999 and Porto in December 2002. At those summits, Russia had pledged to withdraw its arsenal and troops from Transdniester by the end of 2002 and 2003, respectively.
If the Kozak plan is implemented -- as now seems likely -- there may be no need to complete the withdrawal any longer, or its completion might be followed by a speedy return of Russian forces under a different name. What is more, the plan might create a precedent to be applied at a later date to other conflicts within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), such as Abkhazia or Nagorno-Karabakh.
Viewed from this perspective, the most important provision of the Kozak plan is the one stipulating that the envisaged federal Moldova will be demilitarized. This new stipulation (the OSCE plan mentioned that the issue would be dealt with in later proposals, while the Voronin plan called for unified military forces to be set up after a long period in which each side would have its own forces recruited on a territorial basis) is clearly aimed at creating a vacuum of military power in the region which could only be filled by Russia.
It should be read hand-in-hand with the absence from the Russian document of any mention of a mechanism of guarantees and political mediation -- an absence that distinguished the Kozak document from its two predecessors, in which Ukraine and the OSCE were mentioned alongside Russia as guarantors and mediators. Not that the mention was worth its ink, since OSCE decisions must be adopted by consensus and Russia therefore has the power to veto them, but it still offered a semblance of possible counterweight now vanished altogether. And, of course, there is no mention of a possible peacekeeping role for the EU, not to mention NATO. The absence in the Russian plan of any mention of security forces in the envisaged federation is also relevant. Russia, in other words, is to become the sole factor that could intervene and "save peace" in the event that the conflict breaks out again.
Some of the plan's provisions could moreover be construed as laying the ground for the resumption of the conflict. First, the envisaged decision-making process in the future federation is incredibly cumbersome, making it easy not only for Transdniester, but also for Gagauz-Yeri to effectively block it. It also gives Transdniester and the autonomous republic a representation that is disproportionately larger than their respective shares of Moldova's population. The "special majority" required for the adoption of decisions in the federal parliament thus in practice means decisions will be, at best, debated and, at worst, made by virtue of the Moldovan majority conceding defeat.
As a matter of fact, according to the Russian plan, no federal law can be approved without the agreement of the federation's subjects, which practically transforms Moldova into a confederation, rather than a federation. Furthermore, Transdniestrian and Gagauz-Yeri representatives in the cabinet -- each with the rank of a deputy prime minister -- are granted the right to veto any decision that affects their interests (a terminology that could mean anything), including decisions on joining or approving international organizations and signing treaties. Thus, the much-heralded Moldovan "strategic objective" of integration into the EU could be given the "kiss of death" by a simple Smirnov "nyet." The plan also speaks -- in Soviet-era jargon -- of "federal," "subject," and " joint federal-subject" powers, despite the fact that experts from the Venice Commission have already warned that "joint powers" are likely to give rise to disputes.
The granting of "official" status to the Russian language, alongside "Moldovan" as a "state" language, in practice lifts Russian to the level of a state language to be used all over the federation. As Kozak himself said in a recent interview in Chisinau, the difference between the two would rest in the fact that the national anthem and the swearing in of the president would be sung or, respectively, recited, in "Moldovan."
All in all, then, the Kozak plan constitutes a good recipe for safeguarding and advancing Russia's interests in the region. As for "Moldovan" interests, it would seem those would be restricted to the federation's official name. It remains to be seen for how long.
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT URGES COMMEMORATION OF 1932-33 FAMINE VICTIMS... President Leonid Kuchma has called on his fellow compatriots to pay tribute to the victims of the man-made 1932-33 famine in Ukraine that claimed the lives of 5 million-10 million people, Interfax reported on 22 November. "Severe starvation was the apogee of mass repressions in Ukraine.... The truth [about the 1932-33 famine] only became common knowledge for the international public in the years since Ukraine's independence. In fact, the famine is today recognized as a tragedy of mankind," Kuchma said in his appeal. JM
...AS EFFORT FAILS TO STRIP STALIN APOLOGIST OF PULITZER. The board responsible for handing out the most prestigious prize in U.S. journalism announced on 21 November that a former correspondent for "The New York Times" will not be stripped of his 1932 prize despite calls for its withdrawal, international media reported. A number of groups, including many within the Ukrainian diaspora, lobbied to have Walter Duranty's prize rescinded in light of a series of articles he wrote in 1931 on Soviet economic reforms (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 3 May 2003). In publications following the award of the prize, Duranty remained silent over the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine. The Pulitzer Prize board said in a statement that the prize is awarded not for the author's body of work or for the author's character but for specific articles entered in the competition. "Duranty's 1931 work, measured by today's standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short," the board said. "However, the board concluded that there was no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case." JM
CEI SUMMIT IN WARSAW URGES EU TO KEEP ITS DOOR OPEN. The prime ministers of the Central European Initiative (CEI) states, gathered in Warsaw for a three-day summit, said in a statement on 21 November that the doors to the European Union should remain open to all states that are interested in membership and fulfill EU criteria, PAP reported. Participants in the summit also stressed the need for tighter cooperation in the struggle with international terrorism. The CEI, formed originally by Austria, Italy, Hungary, and Yugoslavia in 1989, now consists of 17 countries: Albania, Austria, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Hungary, and Italy. JM
TRANSDNIESTER WANTS RUSSIAN TROOPS TO 'GUARANTEE PEACE' FOR 30 YEARS... Commenting on the recent Russian plan for Moldova's federalization, separatist leader Igor Smirnov said on 21 November that he wants the Russian troops to be present in the envisaged future federation for 30 years as "peacekeepers," Moldovan media and ITAR-TASS reported. Smirnov also said Russia, Ukraine, and the OSCE should offer political guarantees to Transdniester, which should apply even if the federalization plan is rejected in a referendum. Reacting to Smirnov's comments, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin said on the same day that any pacifying forces should be present in Moldova only for a short "transition period," Flux reported. He added, however, that he would not oppose a longer presence of Russian forces if those were to be joined by forces from Ukraine, the OSCE, and the EU. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Yakovenko commented that "Moscow believes the suggested format and period of a [Russian] military presence will hardly be necessary under the current circumstances and the [likely] agreement on a political settlement of the Transdniester problem" (see End Note below). MS
Critics of earlier plans for Moldova's federalization as an instrument for solving the long-standing Transdniester conflict are likely to feel vindicated. They had warned against the dangers inherent in two earlier federalization proposals: one worked out by the OSCE at and following the Kyiv meeting of July 2002 and the follow-up proposal by Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin in February 2003.
But the Russian plan, nicknamed the "Kozak plan" after Dmitrii Kozak, the deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's administration who is its apparent "godfather," incorporates all the drawbacks against which federalization's critics have been warned, and adds new ones. Timing is also highly important, since the plan allows Moscow to show up at the forthcoming December OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Maastricht as the champion of peace rather than as in breach for the second consecutive year of fulfilling the obligation assumed at the OSCE summits in Istanbul in November 1999 and Porto in December 2002. At those summits, Russia had pledged to withdraw its arsenal and troops from Transdniester by the end of 2002 and 2003, respectively.
If the Kozak plan is implemented -- as now seems likely -- there may be no need to complete the withdrawal any longer, or its completion might be followed by a speedy return of Russian forces under a different name. What is more, the plan might create a precedent to be applied at a later date to other conflicts within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), such as Abkhazia or Nagorno-Karabakh.
Viewed from this perspective, the most important provision of the Kozak plan is the one stipulating that the envisaged federal Moldova will be demilitarized. This new stipulation (the OSCE plan mentioned that the issue would be dealt with in later proposals, while the Voronin plan called for unified military forces to be set up after a long period in which each side would have its own forces recruited on a territorial basis) is clearly aimed at creating a vacuum of military power in the region which could only be filled by Russia.
It should be read hand-in-hand with the absence from the Russian document of any mention of a mechanism of guarantees and political mediation -- an absence that distinguished the Kozak document from its two predecessors, in which Ukraine and the OSCE were mentioned alongside Russia as guarantors and mediators. Not that the mention was worth its ink, since OSCE decisions must be adopted by consensus and Russia therefore has the power to veto them, but it still offered a semblance of possible counterweight now vanished altogether. And, of course, there is no mention of a possible peacekeeping role for the EU, not to mention NATO. The absence in the Russian plan of any mention of security forces in the envisaged federation is also relevant. Russia, in other words, is to become the sole factor that could intervene and "save peace" in the event that the conflict breaks out again.
Some of the plan's provisions could moreover be construed as laying the ground for the resumption of the conflict. First, the envisaged decision-making process in the future federation is incredibly cumbersome, making it easy not only for Transdniester, but also for Gagauz-Yeri to effectively block it. It also gives Transdniester and the autonomous republic a representation that is disproportionately larger than their respective shares of Moldova's population. The "special majority" required for the adoption of decisions in the federal parliament thus in practice means decisions will be, at best, debated and, at worst, made by virtue of the Moldovan majority conceding defeat.
As a matter of fact, according to the Russian plan, no federal law can be approved without the agreement of the federation's subjects, which practically transforms Moldova into a confederation, rather than a federation. Furthermore, Transdniestrian and Gagauz-Yeri representatives in the cabinet -- each with the rank of a deputy prime minister -- are granted the right to veto any decision that affects their interests (a terminology that could mean anything), including decisions on joining or approving international organizations and signing treaties. Thus, the much-heralded Moldovan "strategic objective" of integration into the EU could be given the "kiss of death" by a simple Smirnov "nyet." The plan also speaks -- in Soviet-era jargon -- of "federal," "subject," and " joint federal-subject" powers, despite the fact that experts from the Venice Commission have already warned that "joint powers" are likely to give rise to disputes.
The granting of "official" status to the Russian language, alongside "Moldovan" as a "state" language, in practice lifts Russian to the level of a state language to be used all over the federation. As Kozak himself said in a recent interview in Chisinau, the difference between the two would rest in the fact that the national anthem and the swearing in of the president would be sung or, respectively, recited, in "Moldovan."
All in all, then, the Kozak plan constitutes a good recipe for safeguarding and advancing Russia's interests in the region. As for "Moldovan" interests, it would seem those would be restricted to the federation's official name. It remains to be seen for how long.