After holding a meeting of Moldova’s security council, President Maia Sandu warned that recent explosions in the country’s breakaway Transnistria region, which borders Ukraine, could herald more destabilization.

President Maia Sandu said after a meeting of Moldova’s Supreme Security Council on Tuesday that explosions in Transnistria for two days in a row “show that there are tensions between various forces” that are interested in destabilizing the breakaway region, where Russian troops have been based since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“This makes the Transnistrian region vulnerable and poses risks to the Republic of Moldova,” Sandu said.
She convened the meeting after two blasts damaged Soviet-era radio masts in breakaway Transnistria, Reuters reported. Transnistrian authorities said a military unit was also targeted. No one was hurt, but two radio antennae that broadcast Russian radio were knocked out.
“We condemn any challenges and attempts to lure the Republic of Moldova into actions that could jeopardize peace in the country,” Sandu told the media, adding that Chisinau “continues to insist on a peaceful settlement of the Transnistrian conflict”.
The leader of Transnistria, Vadim Krasnoselsky said that “explosions have been heard in the country” and “naturally, an appropriate response to each challenge is following”.
The Moldovan Government Office for Reintegration Policy said meanwhile that “unidentified people fired grenade launchers at the headquarters of the so-called security institution [of Transnistria]” in the city of Tiraspol on Monday.
The aim of the attack was “to create pretexts for straining the security situation in the Transnistrian region, which is not controlled by the constitutional authorities”, the government official said.
An official in breakaway Transnistria blamed Kyiv for the security HQ attack on Monday, called it a “terrorist act” and accused Ukraine of “provoking a spreading of the conflict to Transnistria’s territory”, the BBC reported.
Moldovans were already concerned by comments made on Friday by senior Russian military commander Major General Rustam Minnekayev, who said that if Russian forces establish control over southern Ukraine, Moscow will secure “another route” to Transnistria, where Russia has had around 2,000 troops based since 1992.
The troop deployment followed the war against the separatist rebels on the left bank of the Dniester River which erupted after Moldova declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Some of the Russian troops in Transnistria belong to a peacekeeping mission that has a mandate to be on Moldovan soil; the other is the Operative Group of Russian Troops, OGRT, which guards a massive ammunition depot and is considered illegal by Moldova and the West.