In fact, the settlement process since 2016 has been characterized primarily by a joint position and in-country coordination between the mediators and observers urging engagement and concrete results by Chisinau and Tiraspol. However, behind the façade of this stark East-West split, a number of changing economic, social, and political factors complicate both this straightforward depiction of the dividing lines in the conflict and prospects for its resolution. Indeed, Tiraspol and Moscow have been and are generally closely aligned, in opposition to Chisinau and the Western participants in the Five-Plus-Two. Over the past fifteen years, the Transdniestrian conflict has increasingly been portrayed in press accounts and expert analyses in stark geopolitical terms: a pro-Western, democratic, recognized state on the right bank of the Nistru/Dniestr River, seeking European integration, confronted by an authoritarian, corrupt, left-bank secessionist region oriented toward and supported by Russia. In early December, the OSCE Ministerial Council adopted a statement welcoming these achievements of an “output-based” process while also reaffirming support for a settlement preserving Moldova’s territorial integrity and affording a special political status for Transdniestria within Moldova. Nonetheless, the events of November-December 2017 in the Moldova-Transdniestria political settlement process might seem to bring renewed hope to even the most dejected participants in the negotiations, whose optimistic aspirations have been battered over the past decade and a half by the unwavering intransigence of the parties to the conflict and by geopolitical competition among the external facilitators, so-called mediators and observers.Ĭhisinau and Tiraspol reached agreement in November on five of their self-identified eight priority issues in the settlement process, which their international partners welcomed in a subsequent Five-Plus-Two meeting (representatives of Chisinau and Tiraspol and mediators from Russia, Ukraine, and the OSCE, joined by observers from the EU and the United States).
One cannot engage in mediation in pursuit of a settlement of a protracted conflict such as that between Moldova and its breakaway Transdniestrian entity without being a hopeless optimist.
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