Moldova's Pro-Russian President Vows to Keep NATO at Bay

Moldova's pro-Russian President, Igor Dodon, said he intends to ask the UN Security Council to officially acknowledge Moldova's neutral status, in a move to keep the former Soviet republic out of NATO and continue his policy of rapprochement with Russia.

In the middle of a major diplomatic row between Moldova and Russia, after Chisinau expelled five Russian diplomats for spying, and after Russia then expelled five Moldovan diplomats in return, Dodon was in St Petersburg on Friday to attend the Eurasian Economic Forum, where he was scheduled to speak the same day.  

His decision to attend the forum broke a government ban imposed at the beginning of the year on officials traveling to Russia.

In a long interview with the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, published on Friday, Dodon said Moldova had made a mistake in 2015 when it signed its association agreement with the European Union.

"My stance has remained unchanged, although some people hoped that I would say one thing in Moscow and another in Brussels. However, I have always said frankly that the signing of the EU association agreement was a mistake," he said.

"Back in 2014, it was a geopolitical move that was profitable for Europe, not Moldova," Dodon said.

"Our domestic political forces needed this agreement to prove during the electoral campaign that they had managed to achieve something. But from the economic point of view, we jumped the gun and lost the Russian market," he added.

According to the President, the country's exports dropped by half in 2015-2016.

"We opened the market to the flow of European goods that killed our manufacturers. Dozens of thousands of jobs were lost, and people are leaving the country," he said.

"That's why the association...