The Economist 14Dec2019

The EconomistDecember 14th 2019 Europe 27

O

n december 9ththe World Anti-

Doping Agency (wada) banned Rus-

sia from major sporting events for four

years. The ban will apply to next year’s

Olympics in Tokyo, the 2022 winter

Olympics in Beijing and that year’s foot-

ball World Cup, to be held in Qatar. It

follows the discovery that Russian offi-

cials are still covering up widespread

cheating. Russia handed over computer

files in January that were supposed to be

a full account of past doping, which

wadathinks involved more than 1,000

athletes and was directed by government

ministers. Butwadafound the files had

been doctored.

A four-year ban sounds like a stiff

penalty. But it is full of loopholes. It

applies only to “major” tournaments,

which do not include such mega-events

as next year’s European Championship

in men’s football.

Even at competitions thatwada

classifies as “major”, such as the World

Cup, the ban could allow Russians to

compete under a neutral flag. The fine

print of the agency’s ruling specifies that

athletes may take part as long as they

have neither been named in the docu-

ments that the Russian officials handed

over nor failed any drug tests.fifawill

probably allow Russians to play their

qualification matches for the 2022 com-

petition in their national colours. Only at

the finals in Qatar will the team have to

give up its flag and anthem.

This arrangement has already been

used at the Olympics, and will probably

continue at next year’s games in Tokyo.

The International Olympic Committee

(ioc) suspended Russia’s team from the

winter games in Pyeongchang last year,

but in name only. It still allowed 168

competitors to appear as “Olympic ath-

letes from Russia”, collecting 17 medals

in all. The men’s ice hockey squad won

gold while wearing a distinctly familiar

red kit (albeit without emblems or flags)

and defiantly sang the national anthem

at the medal ceremony, against official

orders. Few spectators could have

doubted who they were representing.

The message to any such cheats is

clear. If you get caught, you may lose

some of the medals your country has

won, and your teams will briefly com-

pete without your flag. But many of your

stars will slip through the net. Cheaters

sometimes prosper, it seems.

Cheat, cover up, repeat

Russian doping

A four-y ear ban on Russian athletes is less than it seems

H

as russiaquietly taken back control of

Moldova? Many observers reckon that

is what, in effect, happened in the tiny for-

mer Soviet republic in November, when a

pro-Western government abruptly col-

lapsed, to be replaced by a new one that

leans firmly towards Moscow. There is

even a rumour running round Chisinau,

Moldova’s sleepy capital, that Aureliu Cio-

coi, the new foreign minister, is planning

to remove all the European flags from his

ministry. Mr Ciocoi looks shocked when

asked. The flags are going nowhere, he

says, and there is to be “no change at all” in

Moldova’s relations with the eu. However,

since 2013 Russia has embargoed almost all

Moldova’s wine and agricultural produce,

and so his country wants “pragmatic rela-

tions” with Moscow.

Poverty makes it hard for Moldova to

stand up for itself, and its economy has

been looted for years, especially at times

when governments claiming to be pro-

European were in charge. Now, Mr Ciocoi

says, Moldova’s problems are so dire that

unless his government succeeds, in a de-

cade the country could end up as a lot at

Sotheby’s, a London auction house, “with a

starting price of €1.”

Mr Ciocoi is not wrong to paint his

country’s problems as existential. Emigra-

tion is now at such high levels, thanks to

endemic corruption, a miserable economy

and the lure of better-paid jobs in the eu,

that one study predicts that by 2035 there

will be only 2.1m people left in a country

which had 4.3m in 1989.

Russian aspirations in this corner of Eu-

rope are nothing new. In 1918 the fledgling

Moldovan Republic united with Romania

for a brief interlude. In 1940 the Soviet Un-

ion reclaimed the former Russian imperial

possession, and kept it until the Soviet Un-

ion disintegrated in 1990. Igor Dodon, Mol-

dova’s pro-Russian president, uses pic-

tures of himself with Vladimir Putin to win

elections. In a leaked recording he talks of

getting (illegal) party finance from Russia,

though he says his words were taken out of

context. Last June, though, Mr Dodon

teamed up with a pro-European, Maia

Sandu (pictured), to rid Moldova of Vlad

Plahotniuc, an oligarch who had long

dominated the country as chairman of the

then ruling party. Mr Plahotniuc is now

widely believed to have fled to Miami.

In November the hopeful coalition col-

lapsed. Ms Sandu claims that the new gov-

ernment, voted in by Mr Dodon’s Socialists

and by mps from Mr Plahotniuc’s old party,

is pro-Russian, but that it will say whatever

it needs to to keep Western countries hap-

py, so that, while Russia calls the shots, the

West keeps critical loans flowing. The gov-

ernment fell over a dispute about a new

prosecutor-general. Ms Sandu says Mr Do-

don told her that he did not want it to create

an independent anti-corruption force

which would arrest dirty politicians.

Ms Sandu is down, but far from out. Va-

dim Pistrinciuc, an analyst and supporter,

thinks she needs fewer “nice and smart”

people around her and “more fighters”.

Russia is flooding the country with fake

news and money. Western governments

run sessions on democracy and human

rights. “It is like one side gives boxing

classes while the other side does ballet

ones,” he says. 7

CHISINAU

A pro-Western government has been

pushed out

Moldova and Russia

A quiet takeover