The new fir tree that is to delight the residents and visitors of Chisinau during the winter holydays reached the Great National Assembly Square. The tree is 17 meters in height and was cut from the yard of a kindergarten situated in Botancia district of Chisinau in the morning of December 2, IPN reports.

On Saturday morning, there was installed the 29-meter-high fir tree that was brought from Ukraine. This got to Chisinau with delay and with many broken branches. Employees of the Green Areas Association tried to reanimate it, but acting mayor of Chisinau Silvia Radu asked to take it down and pledged to buy a new fir tree with her own money.

Silvia Radu said she bought the tree for 10,000 lei and donated it to the municipality. The money that she paid for the fir tree will ultimately be donated to an orphanage in Chisinau.

Earlier, Silvia Radu made accusations against the Liberals, blaming them for the state in which the tree was brought from Ukraine. “This morning, the tree was collected in a hurry, without informing me about the state in which it arrived. They wanted to stage this grotesque show, which was directed through SMS by a Liberal heavyweight,” Silvia Radu wrote on Facebook.

In reply, the deputy chairman of the Liberal Party Valeriu Munteanu said that after spending dozens of thousands of lei from public funds in pursuit of exuberance, the impostor mayor ultimately accepted to install the fir tree proposed by those from the Green Areas Association a month ago. “Evidently, it was done arbitrarily, without a felling authorization, with serious irregularities and with serious damage caused to the environment,” he stated.

The fir tree bought in Ukraine for 15,000 lei will be cut to pieces and its upper part will be donated. An internal inquiry will be conducted to determine why the tree reached the capital city in such a state.