BRUSSELS --- The EU is to spend another €40m on Moldova's army, amid fresh revelations on Russian efforts to topple its pro-Western government. The bulk of the money will be spent on a "ground-based mobile long range surveillance radar" to help Moldova control its airspace, according to an internal EU memo dated 13 March and seen by EUobserver.
The rest will be spent on "high-mobility light tactical and pick-up vehicles", "forklifts, buses, and trucks", "communication equipment", and anti-hacking hardware and software.
The money is to come from the European Peace Facility (EPF), a joint €8bn fund created by EU countries, most of which is being spent on Ukraine.
And the Moldovan purchases will be handled by Estonia's military-procurement branch, the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments. Germany, Romania, the UK, and US are also helping Moldova to build up its armed forces on a bilateral basis, the EU memo noted. The US "will likely increase its engagement substantially in 2023 to a level close to but below" the EU's new €40m grant, the memo said.
Moldova itself is also planning to buy "an air surveillance radar system in complement to the radar proposed under this AM [assistance measure]," it added.
The radar purchases come after Russia repeatedly fired missiles through Moldovan airspace to hit targets in Ukraine in recent months.
The new EU money will likely be agreed this month or next month and disbursed "quite quickly", EU sources said.
But military threats aside, the EU and US have also redoubled warnings that Russia is planning a coup in Moldova to remove its pro-Western leaders, who applied for EU membership last year.
(Click here for the full story, on the EU Observer website.)
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