Over the past few weeks unprecedented progress in the negotiations between the government in Chișinău and the authorities of the breakaway-separatist region of Transnistria has unfolded. The progress has caused modest hope for a breakthrough in this 25-year-long frozen conflict and it should rather be seen as a tool in Vlad Plahotniuc's political game. The oligarch ruling over Moldova cleverly draws on a beneficial international environment and the favourability of Moscow and Tiraspol.

In recent months, the Moldovan parliament passed two bills which aim to change the country’s electoral system. It now seems ever more likely that Moldova will adopt a mixed electoral model and increase the chances of Vlad Plahotniuc, an oligarch (who is the wealthiest and most influential man in Moldova) and leader of the biggest pro-European party in the ruling coalition, to stay in power after the planned 2018 parliamentary elections. Time and again, Plahotniuc has found support from his formal rival – the leader of the pro-Russian socialists, President Igor Dodon.

Moldova is beginning to resemble the pro-western autocracies of the Middle East. While the United States legitimises the country’s pathologies of power, the European Union is trying to address them.