By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- The war in Ukraine showed increasing signs of spilling over into neighboring states, as Russian-backed separatists in the Transnistria region of Moldova claimed there had been three "terror attacks" on their territory in the last two days.
The Russian news agency TASS reported Transnistria's self-appointed security council as saying that there had been attacks both on a military base near the regional capital of Tiraspol and a radio transmitter near the settlement of Mayak, which had been used by Russian state radio stations.
Newswires quoted a Kremlin spokesman as saying that Russia, which has backed the unrecognized breakaway statelet since 1991, is watching developments closely.
The news threatens to reheat one of the 'frozen conflicts' of eastern Europe that arose at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse when outposts of Russian influence were left isolated by the emergence of new independent states such as Moldova and Ukraine. Transnistria occupies a slim strip of land on the eastern bank of the Dniester river, between Moldova and western Ukraine. The region was heavily militarized in the post-World War 2 period by Stalin, conceived as a bulwark against U.S. influence in Romania and the eastern Balkans.
The attacks come less than a week after Russia appeared to change its war aims, saying it would seek control over all of southern Ukraine, giving itself direct access to Transnistria. That, in turn, appears to have prompted a change in the U.S. thinking about the war, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin openly saying for the first time on Monday that the U.S. wants to "weaken" Russia's ability to project force across eastern Europe.
The news is consistent with a growing trend of unexplained incidents outside Ukraine, which was also in evidence on Monday when two big military fuel dumps near Russia's biggest oil export pipeline in Bryansk suffered major fires. The fires were extinguished early on Tuesday morning according to Russian authorities. There have also been unexplained fires elsewhere in Russia's military-industrial complex. Authorities said 17 people died in a conflagration at an aerospace research institute in Tver last week.