EU candidate could become failed state like Ukraine – Russian spy chief
Western meddling has turned Ukraine into a failed state, and Moldova – another post-Soviet republic – is risking the same fate, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has argued.
“In any place where the West inserts its tentacles we see discord and destabilization. Ukraine is the clearest example,” Sergey Naryshkin said on Tuesday at a meeting in Moscow with his counterparts from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a post-Soviet regional intra-governmental group.
Kiev was “tempted with so-called Euro Integration” into becoming an anti-Russian “battering ram for the US”, the official said. As a result, the country is “no longer viable politically or economically,” and “Moldova is walking down the same path.”
The EU granted Moldova candidate status in 2022, alongside Ukraine.
Moscow has accused Ukrainian politicians, who came to power following a US-backed armed coup in 2014, of alienating the Russia-leaning part of the population with discriminatory policies and incendiary rhetoric – leading to the current hostilities.
Moldova’s incumbent President Maia Sandu won a new term as head of state earlier this month. Moscow has claimed that her pro-Western government rigged the vote through suppression of opposition voices and manipulation of access to the ballot box for Moldovans living abroad.
Naryshkin warned that the tainted victory, combined with public anger from the pro-opposition populace, “make Chisinau’s continued drift towards the EU problematic and place a time bomb under the integrity of the Moldovan state.”
The intelligence chief went on to accuse elites in the US and the EU of resorting to sabotage in an effort to cling to their dwindling power.
“They want to convince the rest of the world that the only alternative to Western rule is chaos, and to do that they deliberately destabilize the situation in key regions of the world,” the Russian official argued.
Naryshkin compared the Western mindset to that of a mafia don who lives by the motto: “you die today, so I can live till tomorrow,” and accused the US and its allies of dividing the world into their own people, and those to be subjugated and plundered.
The Russian official concluded that nations that work creatively to ensure the safety of their populations from Western interference are the greatest obstacle to Washington’s plans.
