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Asked if he could rule out the possibility of Russia using its military base in Transdniestria to attack Ukraine, Ignatiev said he could not speak for Moscow.

Ignatiev dismissed Moldova’s bid to join the EU as “detached from reality”, and said it would create the additional risk of a resurgence in hostilities, because Chisinau had taken the decision “unilaterally”.

Referring to Michel’s promise of military aid, Ignatiev said: “Of course such statements, such actions do not add to the calm, but on the contrary contribute to tension and interfere with the normalisation of the situation.”

“The situation is alarming because Transdniestria has suffered terrorist attacks,” Vitaly Ignatiev, foreign minister of the administration of the self-declared breakaway Transdniestria region, told Reuters in an interview by video link from his office in Tiraspol, the region’s capital.

The Transnistrian leader, Vadim Krasnoselsky, declined an interview request; the head of Transnistria’s external affairs department, Vitaly Ignatiev, declined to comment when reached by phone; and the Transnistrian authorities also denied entry permits to The New York Times.