The Regnum news agency has a long but very interesting backgrounder on the real status of the independence of the unrecognized states of Transdniestria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

It looks in detail at how the Kosovo precedent has put Russian diplomacy in a hard spot. It also discounts the urban myth of Transdniestria (and the others) being mere puppets of Moscow. Why?

because it is clear that the policies that they carry out do not always coincide with Russia’s and indeed sometimes blatantly contradict official statements by the Kremlin. Politically, the ‘de facto’ independent states have never been as independent and indeed, they have never been as unrecognized [as today].

Über-propagandist Vladimir Socor has a frequent spin about how Tiraspol’s leadership are paid by the Russian Federation and are mere puppets of Moscow. But instead of taking him at face value (a false premise which will lead to incorrect conclusions), read the long and serious analysis from Regnum and then judge for yourself.

In Russian here. A couple of robot translations here and here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Transdniestria musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.