Officials of the Chisinau City Hall laid flowers at the monument to Ruler Stephan the Great and Holy on the occasion of the Day of Chisinau City. The event involved the mayor of the Ukrainian town Chernauts, who will sign a twinning agreement with the municipality of Chisinau, and representatives of the diplomatic corps, IPN reports.

Mayor General Dorin Chirtoaca said that our fate is in our hands and after almost eight years of mayoralty, he ascertained that the difficulties can be overcome and development is possible. “We must only have the necessary wisdom to continue this development road. After 578 years of the first documentary attestation of Chisinau, the city is a very young one  competed with the European cities, but it must catch up with the cities of Europe and reach high living standards,” said the mayor.

Dorin Chirtoaca noted that he wants more projects like those started last year and this year to be implemented in Chisinau, like the repair of Alecu Russo St and the laying out of pedestrian area. “I don’t think that the existence of building sites on the City’s Day is a problem. It is in fact a reason for joy and we want such projects to be higher in number and of a higher quality,” he stated.

Asked about the twinning agreement with Chernauts, Dorin Chirtoaca said it is a cause for joy especially now that Ukraine goes through a war for independence and freedom. “They struggle for us to and today we will twin with Chernauts town, which formed part of Stephan the Great’s Moldova. We had the same fate and will surely share the fate of European integration and will be together in the family of free European cities,” he stated.

Chisinau appears first with this name in a document of 1436. It is one of the few settlements whose name didn’t suffer changes during centuries. In the time of Alexandru cel Bun, the name “Chisinau” was pronounced as nowadays.