Sandu believes that the Russian Federation simplified the issuance of passports in Transnistria to mobilize people for the war. Residents of the region are choosing Moldovan citizenship en masse.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has criticized the decision of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to simplify the process of obtaining Russian citizenship for residents of occupied Transnistria. According to the Moldovan leader, Moscow may use the passportization of the population to recruit people for the war against Ukraine. This was reported by Politico, according to UNN.

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The day before, Putin signed a decree allowing residents of the unrecognized Transnistrian region to obtain Russian citizenship without the requirement of residing in the Russian Federation or knowledge of the Russian language.

Sandu reacted to this during a security conference in Tallinn.

“They (the Russians) probably need more people to send to the war in Ukraine,”

She also noted that Russia continues to pressure Moldova over the issue of reintegrating Transnistria—a separatist region in the east of the country where Russian troops have been stationed since the collapse of the USSR.

According to Sandu, after the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the majority of the region’s residents began applying specifically for Moldovan citizenship.

“Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, most people from the region have obtained Moldovan citizenship because they felt safer having the citizenship of the Republic of Moldova rather than the citizenship of Russia,”

Moldova was granted candidate status for European Union membership in 2022, and in 2024, it officially began membership negotiations.

Commenting on the possibility of the Kremlin influencing the country’s European integration through the situation surrounding Transnistria, Sandu emphasized that the decision regarding Moldova’s accession to the EU is made exclusively by the European Union.

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