All a Ukrainian invasion of Transnistria would do is give Putin's claims about Ukrainian aggression some veneer of legitimacy and annoy Moldova, which doesn't want to see something which is constitutionally part of their territory fought over and then bargained back to Russian control...
They basically are. They speak Russian and act like Russians. I doubt they'd mind being annexed.
They don't have russian passorts. How can they be russians?
You clearly are not familiar with how things work in Transnistria.
Just because Putin says those people are Russians so he can claim some clay, doesn't make it a fact.
Sure some are ethnically Russian, but that doesn't make them Russian citizens.
They are Moldovan citizens. Transnistria is a rouge separatist nation that's not internationally recognized and only exists on paper because Russia has troops and weapons there and Moldova is too weak to do anything about it.
Not sufficiently familiar then.
"It is estimated that about 250,000 out of 500,000 people living in Transnistria hold Russian citizenship."
That's as of 2020, "passportization" has continued since then.
https://warsawinstitute.org/russia-hands-passports-diaspora/
Case in point, no other UN nation recognizes Transnistria or Transnistrean passports. Transnistrean citizens travel with Moldovan passports.
???
That’s errr... going poorly.
An investigation via open sources by the BBC and Meduza (an anti-Putin media outlet based in Latvia) has confirmed the deaths of about 15k Russian soldiers since the start of the war, and estimates the true number to be up to 60% higher.
What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?
Where do you get the estimate of the true number? Your cited source only has the count of the named individuals identified, not anything corresponding to your claimed total KIA estimate. (Also, the investigation was published, as you linked, by Meduza, but conducted by the BBC and Mediazona, not the BBC and Meduza.)
> What sources do you have that the widely reported media number of 200k+ is actually true that doesn’t ultimately come from the government of Ukraine (who would have an interest in over-inflating their victories) or by a western government that is militarily supporting Ukraine?
Who else (besides sources with opposite biases, like official Russian sources – who haven’t provided casualty estimates since September) would have the kind of information necessary to make a meaningful estimate? (Also, the most commonly cited figure, which is sourced to the UK Ministry of Defense, is “up to” 200,000 casualties, with 40,000-60,000 KIA, not 200K+ KIA.)
But even if we go by that confirmed-by-name count as the full count of KIA, it roughly matches the Soviet KIA in Afghanistan, which was instrumental in the collapse of the USSR, so, going quite badly.
The former, yes. The latter, no.
A Ukraine invasion of Moldova would result in Ukraine being forced to capitulate by the sudden collapse of all outside support.
I suppose Ukraine supporting a Moldovan effort to push Russia out of Transnistria might be a thing that could happen without that consequence, but it doesn’t seem like something likely to happen while Ukraine is busy fighting Russia over Ukraine.
Transnistria isn’t part of Russia and Ukraine isn’t going to take it from Moldova.
It is controlled by Russia.
> Ukraine isn’t going to take it from Moldova.
What is that based on?
And Ukraine obviously supports the Moldovan government’s opposition to that condition, but Ukraine isn’t going to unilaterally invade Moldova to fight Russians while its got plenty of Russians in Ukraine to deal with.
https://www.arnika.org/en/hotspots/moldova/the-largest-illeg...
Cobasna is a huge problem in waiting but it's not an urgent problem.
The real solution is for Russia (as the Soviet Union's biggest successor state) to handle the cleanup and reparations when the region is handed back to Moldova.
No, it's a toy movement.
> There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip
Transnistria could play precisely that role.