A bust of Lenin is stashed in the stairway of the Regional History Museum in Comrat on June 11. Comrat is the capital of Gagauzia, a majority Russian-speaking autonomous region of Moldova.
Photographer: Andrei Pungovschi/BloombergPutin’s Proxies Work to Thwart Moldova’s Embrace of the West
Moldova’s president is determined to take her country into the European Union. A pro-Russian region shows how critical — and fraught — that mission is.
It’s Friday evening on the Moldovan steppe when Ivan Bessarab abandons his rounds of the construction site and ambles over, an enormous dog in tow. The two are watching over a future fun park, though there’s little to protect beyond some new streetlights, a pile of timber and a scaffolding arch that will carry its name: GagauziaLand.
A field in one of Europe’s poorest countries may seem like an inauspicious place for a family attraction, but the site isn’t just an amusement park.