The “Commission of the Congress of USSR People’s Deputies for the Political and Legal Estimation of the Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact of 1939” (hereafter, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Commission, or MRC) was an important landmark in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The pact and the secret protocol attached to it, signed by Soviet for¬eign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939, drastically redrew the map of Eastern Europe. In 1939-40, the Soviet Union incorporated the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, Karelia, and the eastern territories of Poland into its domain. The existence of the secret protocol was a long-established concern of Baltic intellectuals, although Soviet authorities repeatedly denied its very existence.

Eurasia daily monitor — Tuesday, June 21, 2011—Volume 8, Issue 119

by Vladimir Socor 

Negotiators are meeting in Moscow today (June 21) to re-launch the 5+2 format (Russia, Ukraine, OSCE, the United States, European Union, Chisinau, Tiraspol) for Transnistria conflict-settlement, after a five-year breakdown in the official negotiations. This meeting is expected to decide the resumption of official negotiations at the next meeting on the ministerial level. The Western-oriented Chisinau ardently wishes, and works for, the resumption of official negotiations. 

However, the timing is less favorable than at any stage since these negotiations began. Compared with 2005-2006--when Moscow allowed the 5+2 format to operate for exactly five months--the global and European trends have turned against the West. The United States, exhausted in expeditionary wars, has moved to a back seat regarding the protracted conflicts in Europe’s East. On the Transnistria conflict, the dedication formerly demonstrated by US negotiator David Kramer is now missing. The Obama administration prioritizes its reset with Russia, both as a foreign policy strategy and as a 2012 electoral strategy; and meanwhile seems unlikely to irritate Russia in Europe’s East generally or Moldova specifically. The US and EU are enfeebled by financial crises that would have been inconceivable during former stages of these negotiations. Conversely, Russian confidence has rebounded after the economic crisis, and is higher today than at any past negotiating stage.

The European Union’s official representatives (External Action Service) are working hard for a settlement compatible with European interests and Moldova’s Western orientation. However, Germany currently promotes a solution at Moldova’s expense, as part of Berlin’s special relations with Moscow. This is clearly reflected in Berlin’s “non-paper” on Moldova/Transnistria and accompanying diplomatic conversations (see EDM, June 6, 8). 

Chisinau is being told that Berlin’s focus on the Transnistria problem (with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office directly involved) has opened a window of opportunity for Moldova. However, Berlin is interested in a minimal semblance of progress on Transnistria to justify creating an EU-Russia security and political committee, bypassing the US and NATO on European security affairs (June 2010 Meseberg Memorandum). Berlin even hoped to see that EU-Russia committee approved already in November 2010, before Russia had delivered anything at all on Transnistria. Given its neo-Ostpolitik and its heavy dependence on Russian energy supplies, Germany cannot be an effective player for Europe on the Transnistria problem at this time. Instead of counterbalancing Moscow’s influence on the negotiating process, Berlin seems to add to that influence. 

Lacking status in the 5+2 format, Germany seeks to impact on it from outside, and has even opposed the issuance of an EU non-paper ahead of the June 21 Moscow meeting. The EU and the US have only submitted a short, jointly drafted document for possible adoption at the Moscow meeting. The OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine have each prepared their own drafts for this meeting.  All these documents have been circulated to the participants confidentially. 

The document to be adopted by consensus at this meeting will define the basis for the long process ahead. A document disproportionately reflecting Russian interests would, if adopted, vitiate the process from the start, perhaps irreparably. 

The OSCE has been handling this “negotiating process” for 18 years, often deferring to Russia. The OSCE’s draft document, prepared for the June 21 Moscow meeting, shows it on the brink of a false start. It largely reflects a Russian-German convergence. It sets the goal of “support[ing] the Meseberg initiative…to resolve th[is] conflict as part of a wider effort to manage cooperatively unresolved problems of intra-European security.” With this, it introduces a goal-orientation wholly extraneous to Transnistria conflict-resolution as such. Indirectly it seeks to generate pressure on Moldova to make concessions for the sake of a higher, allegedly European goal. The loaded word “intra-European” is sometimes being used (as in this case) to reduce the role of the US as an “extra-European” power in European security affairs.  

This document stresses “the importance of convening the resumed official negotiations [i.e., at the follow-up meeting] in Moscow, in the presence of senior Russian officials.” This would raise Russia’s status--and credit for the re-launched official negotiations--above the other participants’ status and credit. It also suits Berlin to play up Russia’s role as “constructive” and reward it with the proposed EU-Russia committee.

Curiously, the OSCE draft claims that the re-launched 5+2 negotiations is based on a document adopted in a 3+2 format in 2002, i.e., without the EU and US, three years before the 5+2 format had been created (2005). The OSCE even claims that the 2002 document provides a “mandate” on rules for the re-launched official negotiations after the June 21 Moscow meeting. Even more strangely, the OSCE draft does not even mention a “5+2” format at all. Russia mentions it at least pro-forma in its own draft document for the June 21 Moscow meeting; but only to say (like the OSCE) that a re-launched official process in 2011 would derive from the 2002 process of 3+2. This move seeks again to reduce the EU and US role. It would also set a precedent for injecting into the 5+2 format any number of past documents suitable to Russia, that were signed in other formats. The EU and US never signed those documents, but would (along with Moldova) be saddled with those documents, if this logic is accepted. 

According to OSCE’s draft, “The two Sides in the conflict [i.e., Chisinau and Tiraspol] have equal rights, without prejudice to the final outcome of negotiations, or to evaluation by any party of the current juridical status.” An unprejudiced approach to juridical status, however, implies withholding recognition of Moldova’s territorial integrity. This clearly deviates from the OSCE Moldova Mission’s mandate (1993), which underscores Moldova’s territorial integrity.

The proposed document calls for “partial, interim, and temporary agreements, on the understanding that they will gradually be included in the [final] document;” and “with the understanding that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” This would allow Moscow and Berlin to claim successes for meaningless gestures (none of them binding or definitive) by Moscow and Tiraspol, as arguments for rewarding Russia with the proposed EU-Russia committee. Moreover, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” spells protracted deadlock, and continuing presence of Russian troops on Moldova’s territory for an indefinitely long time.

It seems very unlikely that the OSCE’s Lithuanian Chairmanship could have co-authored such a document. Apparently, some other parties have executed an end run behind the Chairmanship. 

(part three of three )

Moscow and Berlin converge in asking Chisinau to give up the 2005 law on Transnistria conflict-resolution principles, renounce the unitary character of the state, and (backstage) to move toward federalizing Moldova (see EDM, June 6, 8). Chisinau may well face such demands on June 21 in Moscow, when the 5+2 negotiations resume after a five-year breakdown.

(part two of three)

In the context of Russo-German special relations, the German government proposes to restart international negotiations on the Transnistria conflict from a modified basis, one largely favorable to Russian interests. On this issue, Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs implements a policy that originates in the Chancellor’s Office. The German non-paper, circulated confidentially to the interested governments, suggests certain tradeoffs at Moldova’s expense, both through its proposals (German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Key Issues for a Solution to the Transnistria Conflict,” EDM, June 6) and through its gaps. Some of the accompanying diplomatic conversations strengthen this impression, ahead of the June 21 restart of negotiations in the 5+2 format.

(part one of three)

International negotiations on the Transnistria conflict are set to resume on June 21, for the first time since 2006, in the 5+2 format (Russia, Ukraine, OSCE, the United States, European Union, Chisinau, and Tiraspol). Russia, which had authorized Tiraspol to cause the five-year breakdown, is now bringing Tiraspol back to the table and re-launching the negotiations in Moscow.