U.S. President Joe Biden met with Moldova's president in Poland on February 21 to offer support amid increasing bellicosity from Moscow as the former Soviet republic expresses fears it could be the next target in the Kremlin's sights after Ukraine.
The White House said afterward that Biden "reaffirmed strong U.S. support for Moldova's sovereignty and territorial integrity" in his talks with President Maia Sandu.
Biden highlighted Washington's efforts "to help Moldova strengthen its political and economic resilience, including its democratic reform agenda and energy security, and to address the effects of Russia’s war against Ukraine," the White House said.
There was no immediate statement from Sandu's office.
Sandu has been a consistent pro-EU voice on the Moldovan political landscape, and a new pro-Western government led by Prime Minister Dorin Recean was sworn in last week.
Sandu has repeatedly accused Moscow of seeking to destabilize her country and recently called for more Western weapons for the possible defense of Moldova, which is not in NATO and is a candidate country for the European Union.
Russia maintains around 1,100 troops at a Soviet-era weapons depot in a largely Russian-speaking sliver of Moldova, Transdniester.
Sandu has repeatedly called for Russia to withdraw the troops, and Recean repeated those calls earlier this month.
In response, the Kremlin urged Moldova to exercise caution in its statements about the Russian forces.
Moldova shares a border of about 1,200 kilometers with Ukraine.
Sandu suggested last week alongside blunt accusations by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that there was a Russian plan to organize a coup in Moldova, masked by opposition protests in the capital, Chisinau.
Russia has denied it is plotting to destabilize Moldova, calling the claims “completely unfounded and unsubstantiated."
The U.S. State Department said that, while reports about the plot had not been independently confirmed, it is "certainly not outside the bounds of Russian behavior, and we absolutely stand with the Moldovan government and the Moldovan people."
Protests in Chisinau against Sandu and the country's pro-Western government have drawn thousands of Moldovans, with many in the crowd linked to the Russia-friendly Shor Party, which is led by fugitive politician and businessman Ilan Shor, a convicted embezzler who fled Moldova in 2019 after Sandu’s election.
On February 10, a Russian sea-launched cruise missile crossed through Moldovan airspace before it landed in Ukraine as part of a mass missile attack. Following the incident, Moldova summoned the Russian ambassador.
Mostly-Russian-speaking Transdniester declared independence from Moldova in 1990 over fears Chisinau could seek reunification with neighboring Romania, with which it shares a common history and language, RFE/RL reports.
