The idea of the Republic of Budjak appeared at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s within the process of a national awakening triggered by perestroika. The republic was supposed to include the localities where Gagauzians and Bulgarians lived in southern Moldova and, in another variant, were also in the neighboring southern part of the Ukrainian Odesa region. No such scenario was realised, however Gagauzians from Moldova managed to create their (separatist) republic that existed till 1994 when their region was granted autonomous status within a unitary state. From time to time, the idea of the Republic of Budjak had returned.

Ukrainian-Transnistrian relations have been quite good since Transnistria broke away from Moldova, declaring its (unrecognised) independence in the 1990s. Volunteers from the Ukrainian nationalist from the Ukrainian National Assembly-People’s Self-Defense movement (UNA-UNSO) even helped Transnistrians in their fight against Moldovans in the 1992 war, however, the Ukrainian authorities have incessantly declared their support for Moldova’s territorial integrity. Generally, Kyiv appreciated Tiraspol’s policy towards Ukrainians, an ethnic group which makes up approximately one-third of the quasi-state’s population, and treated the predominantly Slavic Transnistria as a counterbalance to Romanian Moldova. Moreover, Ukraine’s adjacent regions and part of its political and business elite enjoyed economic cooperation with Transnistria based on trade, transit and investment as well as illegal activities such as smuggling. For Transnistria, Ukraine was a window to the outside world.

On November 11th 2013, on Polish Independence Day, nationalists marched to the Russian Embassy in Warsaw. They set ablaze a Polish guard station and tried to storm the embassy’s gates. The incident could have complicated the already difficult Polish–Russian relationship. It is possible that the two countries’ foreign ministers—Radosław Sikorski and Sergey Lavrov—may have tackled […]

Government actors in the field of foreign affairs, especially in the western hemisphere, are paying much more attention to digital diplomacy. The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office offers a simple definition of the term: conventional diplomacy through a different medium, namely the internet. Interestingly, the new government of Transnistria, a quasi-state situated in the European […]