Kiev alleges Russian threat from Transnistria

Kiev believes that Russia’s special services have “reanimated” the Bessarabia project in Ukraine’s Odessa Oblast and Moldova’s borderline districts.

According to Chief of Ukraine’s Security Service Vasyl Hrytsak, in 2015, Odessa was one step away from the “Donetsk scenario.”

In 2015, mass media reported the establishment of a People’s Council of Bessarabia, a unit that consolidated representatives of the ethnic communities of the southwest of Odessa Oblast. The Council’s program said: “Should Ukraine join NATO, we may exercise Bessarabia’s right to self-determination.”

Ukraine’s Security Service reacted by detaining 30 people, mostly members of the Orthodox Cossacks organization, and by accusing them of “acting in the interest of the Russian Federation on the instruction of representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics.” The Service also alleged that the group was plotting murders of well-known Odessa-based pro-Ukrainian politicians and public figures and was going to capture public facilities and to blow up bridges in Mayaky and Zatok.

Recently, Hrytsak alleged new facts of “subversive activities.” “Recently, we have been receiving reports about the Russian special services’ attempts to reanimate the Bessarabia project,” he said.

According to Ukraine’s Security Service, in Odessa Oblast and Moldova’s borderline districts, the Russian special services will try to realize a scenario based on the concept of historical region of Bessarabia. “This also concerns Transnistria, where Russia has a contingent of almost 1,000 servicemen,” Hrytsak said.

He added that they in Tiraspol had restored the runway of the local aerodrome. “Now it can receive all types of airplanes. This is also a hint for us,” Hrytsak said.