[LINK] "Breakaway Transnistria region could become next flashpoint with Russia"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera America's Matthew Luxmoore reports from Transnistria, where the economy is apparently in a state of collapse and people are leaving.

Transnistria certainly needs a shoulder to lean on. A clampdown on the transit of excisable goods, launched last March by Ukraine and enthusiastically taken up by Saakashvili, is severely restricting a trade on which its economy has long relied.

Moreover, the authorities cut pensions by 30 percent in February, promising to return what’s owed once the economic crisis abates. That has led to a daily crowd of mostly elderly people gathering outside the city’s Russian consulate, hoping to access higher pensions under a newly expedited procedure for Russian citizenship.

In the line are also some working-age people looking to leave. Among them is Andrian Braga, who at 23 decided to move to Moscow with his wife and two-year-old daughter. “Things are bad, but they always have been. The fact that everyone’s leaving is nothing new,” he said, standing outside the consulate clutching his daughter’s new Russian passport.

The region has always struggled. Since separating from Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, it’s also been dependent on Moscow’s aid. Heavily subsidized Russian gas has provided a lifeline, saddling Transnistria with a $5 billion debt that would fall on Chisinau if the territory were reabsorbed. Trolleybuses course through central Tiraspol, decorated with pictures of beaming pensioners and the words “Into the future together with Russia!” Like dozens of big-ticket items dotted throughout the region — from modern hospitals to construction cranes — the vehicles bear the logo of their sponsor: Moscow-based non-profit “Eurasian Integration,” founded in 2012 by Russian MP and leader of nationalist party Rodina, Alexey Zhuravlev.

Locals praise Moscow’s projects for providing much-needed jobs, while many young men see conscription into the Russian Army’s regional force as the only chance for a secure job at home. Uniformed soldiers are a common sight in Tiraspol, congregating outside army bases or along the vast perimeter of the former Soviet aerodrome that now lies decaying on its outskirts.