here's hoping for a tight seal

So in its usual bruisingly herky-jerky way, the Yushchenko government has finally cracked down on bandit-state Transdniester. On March 5, Ukraine changed its customs regulations such that "cargos coming to Ukraine from Transdniestria may be cleared only if their clearance is certified by the Moldovan Custom Service". As the Kyiv Post reports, Moldova then demanded that all Transdniester businesses begin to pay Moldovan taxes and reregister in Chisinau (with some tax breaks and other sops).

The extremity of this change in tactics would be hard to overstate, as only last month the government joined up with Russia to circumvent the current negotiations, an act which left out Western participants and accepted the Moscow-Tiraspol argument that, according to EDM, "a) introduced European customs regulations on that border would amount to an "economic blockade" of Transnistria, and b) stated Transnistria has a "right" to conduct its own external trade operations, pending a political settlement of the conflict."

Of course the Transdniester barons and Russia are pissed. Russia has, in fact, been denouncing the new deal non-stop since it went through. Their main reason for opposing the plan is their blindingly obvious insight that Ukraine is using this to try to pressure Transdniester.

Of course it is. When you crack down on smuggled goods out of a country whose economy is based on smuggling, you'd hope it would pressure someone. Transdniester President Igor Smirnov seems to think it will work, too, saying that this means "slow economic death" for the statelet, while his Chamber of Commerce Head just calls it "unacceptable". There was also much talk from Smirnov about how Russia is Transdniester's last real friend.

Prompted by the EU Border Assistance Mission?

In contrast to the Russians and Transdniester government, the EU lauded the crackdown as "very important for the establishment of an orderly regime on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, to which the EU attaches great importance."

They should know what it represents, too, because they recently established their first ever border assistance mission on the Ukraine-Moldova-Transdniester border, a mission whose effectiveness hinged on Ukraine's border integrity.

Smirnov's theory is that Ukraine is being "used by Moldova", while Moldova's response to the change in policy was "well finally!" This seems like a very timely save by Ukraine in the face of the decline into irrelevance of OSCE mediation, a process described in all its painful detail by Vladimir Socor of the Eurasia Daily Monitor (in chronological order starting last summer): 1 OSCE dodging big issues, 2 Transdniester demilitarization deal flawed and full of holes, 3 New deal does not reduce Russian presence in Transdniester, 4 New negotiations format leaves out West, , 5 OSCE survives through minimal relevance, 7 Moscow destroying OSCE credibility from inside, 8 Russia stonewalls at end year conference, 9 EU critical of OSCE-Russia deal.

So you have an EU that is critical of the weak stance of the OSCE.  With that failure of OSCE intervention, the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy was crumbling. It was on the border and in a position to back up its accusations of smuggling with solid evidence, and it desperately needs Ukrainian assistance to curtail that smuggling. The border mission has just had a few months to really put together a decent report, and so I would guess that it was primarily EU pressure that was motivating Ukraine.

Will It Hold Up?

Well, it's already lasted longer than the last time (under Kuchma in 2001) when Ukraine allowed Moldovan customs officials to inspect shipments from Transdniester. That didn't hold up longer than 24 hours. 

The main actor is likely to be Yanukovych. He should come in on the discussion any day now to condemn the loss of real negotiations and friendly relations with Russia, but what he'll do as PM if Regions wins enough seats to get him in is much less clear. EDM speculated that Petro Poroshenko was likely to have benefitted from the illegal trade, which may explain why the NSNU government would be shutting it down right before Yanukovych is set to gain new powers, rather than earlier.

But Yanukovych may restart the trade anyway, arguing for "improved relations" with Russia and betting he'll be able to weather the NSNU and BYT accusations of smuggling enough to make it worthwhile to pick up where Poroshenko left off.