Shooting at Checkpoint Raises Tensions in a Disputed Region Claimed by Moldova

MOSCOW — Tension rose between Russia and Moldova, a former Soviet republic that recently celebrated 20 years of independence, after a Russian peacekeeper fatally shot a young Moldovan man as he sped through a checkpoint early on New Year’s Day.

Russia has roughly 1,100 troops based in the separatist enclave of Transnistria, a ribbon of territory roughly the size of Rhode Island that has large ethnic Russian and Ukrainian populations. Transnistria fought a brief war with Russia’s assistance in an attempt to break from Moldova in the early 1990s, and the enclave’s perimeter is still heavily fortified and patrolled by armed Russian, Moldovan and Transnistrian peacekeepers, though there have been virtually no violent episodes over two decades.

That changed Sunday morning, when Vadim Pisar, an 18-year-old Moldovan, passed a Russian-staffed checkpoint on a road toward Chisinau, the capital.

Russian authorities said Mr. Pisar barreled past the checkpoint on his way out and when he returned a few minutes later did not react to an order to stop. The peacekeeper, who was armed with an assault rifle, fired shots into the air and then at the driver’s side of the man’s car, gravely wounding him in the back. He died in the hospital later that day.

The episode comes at a moment when international negotiators were hoping to defuse one of the last post-Soviet “frozen conflicts.” Last week, Yevgeny Shevchuk, 43, defeated a Moscow-backed candidate in Transnistrian presidential elections, replacing the strongman who has ruled the enclave since 1991. Mr. Shevchuk said his first project would be to ensure the free movement of goods and people to and from Moldova proper, and he proposed eliminating document checks for citizens leaving Transnistria.

Yevgeny Zubov, the new president’s spokesman, said there was no official comment on Mr. Pisar’s shooting because it occurred on Moldovan territory.