Military conflict on Nistru started 15 years ago today

Today, March 2, is the 15th anniversary of the day the military conflict on Nistru started, a conflict that took the lives of 287 combatants and disabled other 305 persons, mostly policemen. According to participants in those events, the war between the two sides of the Nistru River was launched by the unmoral attack of paramilitary insurgents from the left bank of Nistru. Moldova entered the conflict without an army, but with a limitless love for the country, language and the tricolour flag, that confronted the war machine which was heavily backed by the 14th Russian Army, as well as by troops of Cossacks. Mircea Snegur, Moldova’s first president, told Info-Prim Neo that the history of this war had started back on August 27, 1991, when the first Parliament declared Moldova’s independence. Then there expelled all the constitutional institutions from the left side of Nistru. On March 3, 1992, when Moldova joined UN, effective troops of the Transnistrian Guard and units of Cossacks attacked a police post in Dubasari – the last constitutional outpost on that territory, under Chisinau’s jurisdiction. On that day, a war started that was the single war in the world when a country attacked by large military forces tried to defend itself with police forces. According to Mircea Snegur, the separatism from Tiraspol was successful only due to Moscow’s support. Within the Federal Council, when the Moldovan delegation refused to sign the union Treaty, Gorbaciov said: “Mircea, if you don’t sign the Treaty, you will end up having a Transnistrian republic, a Gagauz republic and some three more…”, Snegur said. According to the same source, on June 21, 1992, the Russian president at that time, Boris Eltin threatened to deploy troops if the conflict on Nistru didn’t stop. As the leaders of Moldova of those times were thinking, this was a declaration of war made by Russia, that also provoked the “conflict”, generated, according to the ex-president of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Ghenadi Selezniov in 2002, “to prevent the unification of Basarabia and Romania”. According to experts, Russia’s involvement in the war on Nistru is proven by official documents. Since 1992 and till 1996, the Russian military unit settled in the separatist region has transferred to the separatist army 150 units of weapons and vehicles, as well as over 3.000 tonnes of munitions. The war lasted for 6 months, from March until October, when Russia, Ukraine and Romania, under the auspices of the OSCE, constituted teams of experts to settle the conflict. Today in the morning, the combatants will gather in Chisinau, to remember their fellow war soldiers who felt victims to the conflict on Nistru, but also those who died in recent years due to war injuries. According to statistics, during the war of independence and integrity of Moldova there died 287 persons, other 40 were declared disappeared. From 1992 until now, due to injuries, other 250 veterans died, and 350 were disabled.