Romania is very corrupt. Moldova, I believe, is more so. So it wouldn’t surprise me if the criminal entities there are cross-border, plus probably the politicians are in cahoots (kick backs, etc.)
But it’s also some sort of historical revisionist thing, i.e. “Moldova was always historically part of Romania, and only split off by the Soviets to serve Russian interests.”
Which is only partly historically true, and is, almost to a tee, very much the same argument Putin uses to justify Ukrainian-Russian “brotherhood”…
Which is… Ironic.
There’s also the desire to destroy anything from the Soviet era (such as the writing system, political structures, old textbooks, etc.), so I guess this plays into that…
Which is kind of what Ukraine has done as well, albeit replacing Russian things with their Ukrainian equivalent…
It’s all very stupid.
I suppose though, to give them their due, it’s a bit like East Germany, in that Moldova is poor, and barely produces anything of large-scale economic value (except wine, lol), so it’s in the economic self-interest of the elites to merge with the larger, less-poor, EU-member “mother country”…
However the majority of ordinary people do not want this merger, and unlike the 90s, with the breakup of Czechoslovakia (also an elite project with limited popular support), I don’t see this one being quite as easy to ram through…
Edit: it’s worth noting that Moldova is effectively land-locked, and only has one port that is capable of handling large ships. Whereas Romania (which wants to buy said Moldovan Port, because of course they do)… Is not.
All of which suggests to me that Romania is almost certainly manipulating large parts of this, a bit like Bulgaria (yes, really) does with (North) Macedonia, for similar reasons…
Romania is very corrupt. Moldova, I believe, is more so. So it wouldn’t surprise me if the criminal entities there are cross-border, plus probably the politicians are in cahoots (kick backs, etc.)
But it’s also some sort of historical revisionist thing, i.e. “Moldova was always historically part of Romania, and only split off by the Soviets to serve Russian interests.”
Which is only partly historically true, and is, almost to a tee, very much the same argument Putin uses to justify Ukrainian-Russian “brotherhood”…
Which is… Ironic.
There’s also the desire to destroy anything from the Soviet era (such as the writing system, political structures, old textbooks, etc.), so I guess this plays into that…
Which is kind of what Ukraine has done as well, albeit replacing Russian things with their Ukrainian equivalent…
It’s all very stupid.
I suppose though, to give them their due, it’s a bit like East Germany, in that Moldova is poor, and barely produces anything of large-scale economic value (except wine, lol), so it’s in the economic self-interest of the elites to merge with the larger, less-poor, EU-member “mother country”…
However the majority of ordinary people do not want this merger, and unlike the 90s, with the breakup of Czechoslovakia (also an elite project with limited popular support), I don’t see this one being quite as easy to ram through…