Moldova Considers Abandoning Its Neutrality In The Face Of Escalating Russian Threats.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left nearby Moldova feeling vulnerable and threatened.

With a small military of its own and a decades-long frozen conflict in breakaway Transdniester fueled in large part by Moscow, impoverished Moldova is worried it could be the Kremlin’s next target.

The United States and Britain, as well as the EU, have recently come forward with proposals to beef up Moldova’s modest military.

That has sparked a debate in this country of some 2.6 million people about abolishing its neutral status, with many arguing it no longer serves the country’s best interests. Moldova’s neutrality is enshrined in the country’s post-Soviet constitution.

Chisinau needs to be roused from its “slumber and inertia” to resolve its security challenges given Russia’s “relentless war in Ukraine,” said Igor Munteanu, a recent Moldovan ambassador to the United States.

“Everything is related to this paradigm of neutrality which was, as I said in a certain way, a geopolitical rape…by imposing a poisonous peace and limits of external action by accepting neutrality since 1994,” Munteanu recently told RFE/RL’s Moldovian service.

The debate on whether Moldova should scrap neutrality and move closer to NATO intensified after British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told The Daily Telegraph on May 20 that Moldova should be “equipped to NATO standard” to help protect it against the threat of a Russian invasion.

She said it was clear that, despite limited success in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin retained “ambitions to create a greater Russia.”

Moldova, once a Soviet republic, sits on Ukraine’s southwestern border. It does not share a border with Russia, but is close to some of the regions currently occupied by Russian forces in Ukraine’s south. Moldova is not a member of NATO, although it did apply to join the European Union less than two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. The country’s pro-Russian opposition has not welcomed Western proposals of military help.

Truss’s offer was not the first by a Western official. Derek Chollet, a senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of state, said on May 17 in Chisinau that the United States wants to help the moldovian become “more capable, more effective, and more modern in order to defend its sovereignty and territory.”

During a visit on May 4, European Council President Charles Michel said the European Union would provide military equipment to the Moldovan military.