Russia continues to set information conditions aimed at destabilizing Moldova by framing Russia as a protector of allegedly threatened Russian-language speakers in Moldova.
Russian state news wire TASS reported on December 27 that 19.1 percent of school children in Moldova choose to receive educational instruction in the Russian language.
TASS claimed that the Moldovan government’s refusal to recognize Russian as a state language in 1989 led to the war in Transnistria and the conflict with Gagauzia. TASS further claimed that the ruling pro-European Moldovan Party of Action and Solidarity is exacerbating these alleged long-standing language divides by failing to grant Russian language the status of "a language of interethnic communication.”
Russian forces have occupied Transnistria since 1992, and Russia has continually supported pro-Russian actors in Moldova to promote political instability and division.
Claims that the Party of Action and Solidarity is threating Russian speakers in Moldova allow Russia to frame any potential Russian support for pro-Kremlin actors in Moldova as a humanitarian attempt to protect Russian speakers instead of an attempt to politically destabilize Moldova itself. The Kremlin used exactly this line of argument as one of the bases for its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia is likely attempting to justify any future actions in Moldova as an attempt to protect its “compatriots abroad,” a term that Russia has broadly defined to mean ethnic Russians and Russian speakers outside of Russia regardless of their citizenship. Russia continues to justify its invasion of Ukraine, in part, by claiming Russia is protecting its “compatriots” in Ukraine and their right to use Russian language and will likely continue to use this narrative when discussing any future Russian attempts at imperial reconquests.
