Paul Goble
Staunton,
March 23 – In a race in which none of the ten candidates took an anti-Russian
position, Irina Vlah, the one who most explicitly supported Moscow in general
and Vladimir Putin in particular and who was in turn openly backed by Moscow,
has been elected head of Gagauzia, the Turkic autonomous region in Moldova.
According
to reports, the former communist received 53.21 percent of the votes in
yesterday’s election, far more than her nearest rival, former Comrat mayor
Nicolae Dudoglo, who received 18.2 percent, and has already been congratulated
by the incumbent Gagauz bashkan (sputniknews.com/europe/20150323/1019868791.html).
During
the campaign, Vlah was backed by the opposition Socialist Party and by Russian
pop artists and the appearance of six Duma deputies. In her speeches, she called for Gagauzia to
adopt a “Eurasian” direction as opposed to the European one that Moldova has
already chosen. And her rallies featured Russian flags (turkist.org/2015/03/irina-vlah.html).
Chisinau
complained about this Russian interference in Moldova’s internal affairs, and
some in Moldova and Moscow speculated that the Russian government might have
overplayed its hand and actually cost Vlah votes. But in the end, she won and
in a convincing manner that makes a second round unnecessary (regnum.ru/news/polit/1907554.html).
Moldovan
analysts say that Moscow wants to “transform Gagauzia into a Russian enclave”
and use it as leverage against Chisinau.
One of them said Moscow hopes to use Vlah and the Gagauz to divide and
weaken Moldovan society and to coordinate what happens in Comrat with what
happens in Transdniestria (turkist.org/2015/03/gagauzia.html).
That has been a strategy Moscow has sought to employ in
the past. Vlah’s victory gives Moscow even more possibilities to conduct it.
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