MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin)
The recent, attempted revolution in Moldova has given Europe and the United States a fright.
The protest rallies were clearly organized by the opposition, which provided buses for bringing the demonstrators to Chisinau and supplied them with stones to throw at their targets. Spontaneous rioters, however, cannot seize a parliament and a presidential administration on the same day.
These acts were a carbon copy of the color revolutions in the former Soviet republics. The only question is who organized them in Moldova, and why now?
It looks as if those instigators of unrest spent a long time in confinement and therefore lost touch with reality, which prevented them from correctly assessing the situation, their chances of success and the Western attitude to Moldova. In any case, it is unlikely that the Chisinau mini-revolt was orchestrated from an "evil" Western center.
First, no color revolution in any of the former Soviet republics demanded such strange things as accession to another state. The demonstrators in Chisinau wanted not only "freedom and Europe" but also "accession to Romania," by no means the most liberated or industrialized country in the EU.
Second, the organizers of the failed revolution did not take into account the lessons of the Caucasus conflict last August and its influence on public sentiment in the breakaway Transdnestr region. With the addition of a few nuances, Transdnestr is in the same situation now that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were in before the August 2008 conflict with Georgia.
The United States, the European Union and NATO have started rebuilding their ties with Moscow to the pre-conflict level only recently. A Moldovan revolution, with its suspicious demand that Bessarabia be returned to "Greater Romania," could hamper the process.
Nobody in his right mind would have assumed that Russia would completely disregard such a major geopolitical overhaul on its western border. Had the "revolution" disrupted the nascent thaw in the West's relations with Russia, this would have created considerable problems for U.S. President Barack Obama's new strategy in Afghanistan.
Obama hopes that Moscow will allow NATO to deliver military cargo to Afghanistan via Russia.
Moldova will suffer the effects of its failed revolution for a long time yet, because it has given Transnestr an additional argument against reuniting with Moldova. Indeed, why reunite with a country that is willing to lose its sovereignty and independence?
The reaction of the U.S. and Europe was highly indicative: they urged an end to the violence.
"What's important here is that ... people desist from any type of violent activity. That doesn't help anything," U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said in Washington.
This is a striking statement for a U.S. official, given the Bush Administration's previous support for all kinds of color revolutions in the former Soviet republics. In fact, it sounds like taciturn criticism of the Moldovan "revolutionaries."
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
