Bullied by Russia, but Resolute

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/world/europe/bullied-by-russia-but-resolute.html

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PARIS — When Moldovan wines disappear from Russian supermarkets, the message is clear: Moscow is unhappy with the government in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, a poor country of 3.6 million on Europe’s edge.

It happened in the mid-2000s, and it happened again this fall, both times at the orders of ever-alert Russian sanitary inspectors who seem more attuned to political nuances than to chemical impurities in alcohol, considering the life-threatening dangers of widely available Russian moonshine.

But Moldova, which braved Russia’s displeasure with its decision to sign an association agreement with the European Union, has learned a valuable lesson from its wine ban experiences.

“We have to talk to the Russians in a determined way,” said Oleg Serebrian, Moldova’s ambassador to France. “You cannot be timid and give the impression that you have been intimidated. Every indication of weakness is noted and puts you in a more difficult situation.”

The lesson learned is both diplomatic and economic. When the first wine embargo was imposed in 2006 (at a time when the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, declared he was “hardly satisfied” with bilateral relations), Russia bought 80 percent of Moldovan wine exports. Today, it accounts for only 25 percent, with the rest heading mainly to Europe (where, curiously, it meets strict health standards).

The real turning point came in 2009, when the European Union replaced Russia as the biggest market for Moldova’s goods, taking 55 percent of its exports.

“It was a diversification that was forced on us,” Mr. Serebrian said. “They forced us to become independent.”

That is the opposite of what Russia seeks as it continues to punish trading partners, in apparent defiance of the World Trade Organization, which it joined in 2012. This year, it also put embargoes on Ukrainian chocolate, Lithuanian cheese and a range of Georgian wines, in an attempt to influence the outcome of the European Union’s negotiations with its eastern neighbors.

As Mr. Serebrian spoke in his office at the embassy in Paris, Ukrainian demonstrators were continuing to mass on Independence Square in Kiev, furiously protesting their government’s about-face on the association agreement with the Union, which it — together with Moldova and Georgia — had been expected to sign at a Nov. 28 meeting in Lithuania.

Mr. Serebrian, 44, a career diplomat, is well aware of the subtleties of the situation in Ukraine, a much bigger and more divided country with far greater importance in the tug of war between Europe and Russia. In Moldova, where recent polls showed 60 percent in favor of the association agreement, the government — made up of a coalition with the unambiguous name Alliance for European Integration — had no choice but to stick to its word. “Any change in policy would have totally discredited the alliance,” Mr. Serebrian said.

That did not stop Moscow from playing the bully. Moldovan fruits and vegetables were held up at the Russian-Ukrainian border, at an estimated cost of 12 million euros, or $16.5 million. There was a threat by Moldova’s Gagauzia region to hold a separate referendum on the agreement, eventually blocked by the Constitutional Court.

And then, in September, Dmitri Rogozin, Moscow’s special envoy, went to Chisinau to warn of a difficult winter ahead for Moldova, which is dependent on Russian natural gas. “There were declarations by Russian officials this autumn that were, well, not very polite,” Mr. Serebrian said. “We saw them as a provocation to destabilize the situation. It wasn’t just words, it was also acts.”

Still, Moldova has been careful not to slip into an antagonistic relationship with Russia, which remains an important partner. It refrained from lodging a complaint with the W.T.O. over the wine embargo, choosing instead to negotiate directly with Moscow.

In Mr. Serebrian’s view, Russia’s punitive trade wars amount to “negative motivation,” in contrast to the “positive pedagogy” offered by the European Union. “It has no logic in a 21st-century world,” he said. It also doesn’t work — not in Moldova, not in Georgia, and apparently not in Ukraine.