Transdnestr Asks UN To Recognize Independence From Moldova

The parliament of Moldova's self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic has appealed to Russia, the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed state following an earlier request to include it in legislation drafted to facilitate the annexation of Crimea.

The official appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the State Duma and the Federation Council, as well as the two international bodies, cited a 2006 referendum in the separatist region in favor of joining Russia, Interfax reported Thursday.

Some 97 percent of voters in Transdnestr, a breakaway strip of land wedged between Ukraine and Moldova with a population of less than half a million people, had cast ballots for the right to join Russia.

Moldova's Prime Minister Iurie Leanca condemned the Wednesday appeal as "one-sided and counterproductive," saying that the breakaway region's capital "Tiraspol ignores the reality that Transdnestr is a part of Moldova."

Following Russia's annexation of Crimea, the scenario of Moscow taking over Transdnestr, where it already has more than 1,000 peacekeeping troops following a separatist war two decades ago, seemed to have become more likely.

But Russian officials have been cautious about the possibility, and the head of the Duma committee in charge of relations with former Soviet states, Leonid Slutsky, said on Wednesday that "this question is more complicated than the Crimea case."

"Even if we were to accept, hypothetically, that Transdnestr is regarded as a future subject of the Russian Federation, then immediately a huge number of logistical problems emerge, starting with the lack of a shared border and air communication. And that is just one aspect of the problem," he said.

Russia brought in troops to impose a truce in the fighting between Transdnestr and Moldova in 1992 and the region has remained an unrecognized Russian-speaking state ever since.

Transdnestr, whose flag still features the Soviet hammer and sickle, became a hotbed of arms smuggling and drug and human trafficking in the 1990s, but crime has reportedly receded in recent years.