The Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued an urgent warning to Israeli citizens in Transnistria, a small, breakaway region of Moldova on the Ukrainian border, to leave immediately. The warning came after a series of explosions hit key sites in Transnistria, including the Ministry of State Security building and Russian radio stations in the separatist region.
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Transnistria, a strip of land with about 470,000 people between Moldova and Ukraine, has been under the control of separatist authorities since a 1992 war with Moldova. Russia bases about 1,500 troops there, calling them peacekeepers, but concerns are high that those forces could be used to invade Ukraine from the west. The region's autonomy is not recognized by the international community.
Western officials fear that the blasts – alongside accusations from Transnistria's pro-Russian government that Ukrainian forces were responsible – are an attempt to create an alibi for an attack against Ukraine from the region.
A senior Russian military official, Rustam Minnekayev, said last week that Russian forces aim to take full control of southern Ukraine, saying such a move would also open a land corridor to Transnistria.
The United States has warned previously that Russian forces could launch "false-flag" operations to create a pretext for invading the territory of other nations. Russian officials have rejected such charges.
The Foreign Ministry said in its statement: "In connection with the deterioration of the security situation in the region and due to the inability to provide any assistance to Israeli citizens there, Israelis should immediately leave the region." The ministry also called on citizens planning to travel to the region to "cancel their trips at this time."
'The Jewish community is safe'
Rabbi Pinchas Zaltzman, the chief rabbi of Moldova, visited the region on Thursday and met with Transnistria's president, Vadim Krasnoselsky, in the capital Tiraspol, where he also met with the head of the Jewish community in the city, Yuri Kreitman.
Krasnoselsky praised the Jewish community's contribution to the region's security stability, adding that the recent events there do not represent a danger to the Jewish community. Zaltzman and Kreitman thanked Krasnoselsky for the time he has devoted to developing the Jewish community in Tiraspol and other cities in Transnistria. At the end of their meeting, Zaltzman said the Jews of Transnistria feel safe and that there wouldn't be a mass exodus of Jews from the region.
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