Igor Dodon with Vlad
After Moldova's President, Igor Dodon, was involved in a car accident on Sunday, some pro-Russian Socialist deputies have claimed that he was the victim of a murder attempt.
"This was not an accident but a direct blow to the car. This is an attempt at murder!" Socialist deputy Vlad Batrincea wrote on Facebook.
He later added a list of reasons why some people might want to hurt Dodon, starting with Dodon's verbally stated intention to stand as a Socialist candidate in future parliamentary elections.
The President is seen as "a danger to the [pro-EU] government and right-wing parties, and to their Euro-Atlantic curators", Batrincea maintained.
He argued that a recent meeting between Dodon and breakaway Transnistrian leader Vadim Krasnoselski had been "unprofitable for Romania and the US because it doesn't fit into the algorithm of their interests".
Socialists routinely accuse Romania and the US of trying to force Moldova into their camp and away from Moscow.
The defeated Socialist candidate for the mayoral race for Chisinau in June, Ion Ceban, said that he had had a similar car accident three days ago, implying that the two incidents were somehow related.
"It is strange that three days after my own car accident, the President's car was also implicated in an accident. We are not exactly conspiracy theories adepts, but we understand we need to be more careful and cautious from now on," said Ceban.
President Dodon himself has revealed few details about the accident beyond a brief message that he is OK.
"Everything is in order, without serious trauma, neither to me nor to family members," Dodon said.
But Ceban insisted that the accident was not minor.
"The President avoided disclosing details of the consequences of the accident because he did not want to focus on his condition. But I have found out that a number of injuries were actually recorded, both to him with his backbone and to his child, and his mother, who has already been in surgery," Ceban said.
The presidential car was hit on Sunday morning by a truck, which skidded on a wet road. Police opened an investigation into the incident, but soon labelled it an accident.
Comment: Hmmm.
First Zakharchenko's death, then the leader of Abkhazia, and now a near-thing for another pro-Russia Kremlin ally.