Chisinau: Moldova on Tuesday cautioned Moscow against trying to annex the breakaway region of Transdniestr as President Vladimir Putin signed a historic treaty to make Ukraine`s Crimea part of Russia.
The warning from pro-Western Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti came after officials in the Russian-speaking separatist territory of Transdniestr reportedly appealed to lawmakers in Moscow to pass legislation that could see the region absorbed into Russia.
"Such actions are counterproductive and would not benefit either the Republic of Moldova or the Russian Federation," Timofti told journalists at a press conference.
"It would be a mistake if Russia took such a step," the president of the ex-Soviet state said.
Following a fast-moving sequence of events that saw the Black Sea region of Crimea vote to join Russia in a disputed referendum Sunday, Putin signed an agreement to incorporate the territory less than a month after the ouster of Ukraine`s Kremlin-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych.
The move, an epochal redrawing of Russia`s borders, risks plunging the West and Russia into a crisis not seen since the Cold War and has been rejected outright by the new pro-European authorities in Kiev.
Timofti said that there was a risk of "a repeat of the Ukrainian scenario" in Moldova and called on all sides to respect the country`s territorial integrity.
In November Moldova resisted Russian pressure to initial a watershed agreement on closer trade and political ties with the European Union, and officials say they hope to tie up the deal later this year.
A decision by Yanukovych to spurn a similar deal for Ukraine in favour of a multi-billion dollar bailout from Moscow sparked the months of street protests that eventually saw him swept from power.
Transdniestr, a strip of land on the Ukranian border that is economically dependent on the Kremlin, seceded from the former Soviet republic of Moldova in 1992 after a civil war.
