Members and sympathizers of the Liberal Party laid flowers at the commemorative plaque in the Great National Assembly Square of Chisinau to commemorate thus the 78th anniversary of the annexation of Bessarabia by the USSR, IPN reports.

The Liberal leader Mihai Ghimpu said the tragedy of our nation occurred on June 28, 1940. Bessarabia was torn away from the motherland Romania. The current poverty, corruption and dictatorship derive from the date of June 28, 1940. “If communism hadn’t come, we would have lived as our forerunners wanted and would have been probably one of the most developed states,” noted Mihai Ghimpu.

First deputy chairman of the Liberal Party Dorin Chirtoaca said June 28 is one of the blackest days in our history. “We still live by the rules of Stalin and Hitler, who are now copied by Plahotniuc and Dodon,” he stated.

Also today, the unionists without a party staged a demonstration in front of the Embassy of Russia in Chisinau. “On June 28, 1940, as a result of an ultimatum - you either give us your land or we will occupy your country – Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were occupied, non-peacefully and non-democratically,” said the leader of the pubic association “Unirea ODIP” Vlad Biletski.

On June 26, 1940, Romania received an ultimatum from the Soviet Union demanding the evacuation of the Romanian military and administration from Bessarabia and from the northern part of Bukovina, with an implied threat of invasion in the event of noncompliance. On June 28, 1940, these territories were occupied by the Soviet Union. The events occurred in a broader geopolitical context, when based on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided the spheres of territorial influence in Europe.