Washington doesn't want to see the Ukraine conflict expand to Transnistria or Moldova, according to the US defense secretary.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday at a conference in Germany about supplying Kiev with weapons and equipment. The US is still looking at the recent incidents in the breakaway region of Transnistria and does not want to see the conflict in Ukraine spill over to the area.
Austin told reporters at the Ramstein military base in Germany that we are still looking into the cause of that, still doing analysis there, so we're not really sure what that s all about.
He said that we do everything we can to make sure that Ukraine is successful, because we don't want to see any spillover.
Austin was in Germany to organize 40 US allies to send weapons to Ukraine, promising to move heaven and earth to help Kiev win the conflict with Russia.
His remarks came after the government in Chisinau convened an emergency meeting on the situation in Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova where a number of attacks have taken place over the past two days.
Two explosions on Tuesday destroyed two radio towers in the town of Mayak, which had been broadcasting Russian radio signals to Transnistria. On Monday, someone fired rocket-propelled grenades at a government building in Tiraspol, the capital of the breakaway region. A military base in Parkany was also attacked. There were no casualties.
The authorities in Tiraspol have called the incidents terrorist attacks and put the territory of the self-proclaimed Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic PMR on high alert.
Russia is watching the situation very closely, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, but added there were no plans to arrange a meeting with Moldovan President Maia Sandu at the moment.
The largely Russian-speaking Transnistria declared independence amid the breakup of the Soviet Union, sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. A Russian peacekeeping force has been stationed in the region since the 1992 armistice froze the conflict with Chisinau.