The first President of the Republic of Moldova Mircea Snegur was buried at the Central Cemetery on Armenească St in Chisinau, IPN reports.

In the morning, a service was held at the Nativity Metropolitan Cathedral, where the President’s body was laid. Later, the funeral procession moved to the Palace of the Republic where a funeral and mourning ceremony was staged. President Maia Sandu, Prime Minister Dorin Recean, Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu, former Presidents, former and current MPs, ministers, functionaries, artists and ordinary people came to render homage to him.

“We today bid farewell to the one who, driven by his sincere and profound love for the nation, took the country to the path of sovereignty, independence, national renaissance,” said President Maia Sandu. The official noted that Mircea Snegur, who was a courageous visionary and patriot, in a difficult context assumed the mission of turning into reality the people’s wish to live freely and to affirm their identity through language and the tricolor.

The funeral procession then traveled to the Presidential Palace and to the central square of Chisinau, where a moment of silence was observed, the national anthem was played and the speech given by Mircea Snegur in the Great National Assembly Square on August 27, 1991 was broadcast. From the central square, the procession moved to the Central Cemetery.

Moldova’s first President was 83. He suffered from an incurable disease.

Mircea Snegur was born on January 17, 1940 in Trifănești village of Soroca county. He was an agronomist-scientist, a doctor of agricultural sciences. A former activist of the Communist Party, Mircea Snegur supported the proclaiming of the Republic of Moldova’s independence and acted for the new state to be recognized by the West. Being the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, in the critical moment in August 1989, he accepted to support the law that declared Romanian the official language and restored the tricolor. Such a step earned him Moldovans’ sympathy. On September 3, 1990, Mircea Snegur was named President by the Supreme Soviet of the former Soviet republic. He held office until December 1, 1996.