The Republic of Moldova is the only case where the legitimate, constitutional government and the separatist authorities are recognized as equal parties in negotiations. The Republic of Moldova accepted this situation at the start or middle of the 1990s, which is at least 25 years ago, owing to the weakness and incompetence of the Moldova governments, said Westerner analyst Vladimir Socor, who criticizes the authorities for conceding a lot to the secessionist regime, IPN reports.
In an interview for RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service given on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the signing of the Moldovan-Russian ceasefire agreement of 1992, Vladimir Socor, when asked to comment on President Igor Dodon’s announcement that he will have a meeting with the Transnistrian leader Krasnoselsky until the end of this month in connection with the presidential elections, said the meetings the two had until now produced no result for the Republic of Moldova and only justified Krasnoselsky’s position of “leader of Transnistria”.
“Now, before the elections, Mister Dodon surely wants Mister Krasnoselsky to help him, to send electors from Transnistria to vote in the presidential elections and in the snap parliamentary elections, allegedly for Mister Dodon and for the Party of Socialists. This arrangement was initiated by Mister Plahotniuc by his personal agreements with Victor Gușan, who, in the presidential elections of November 2016 and in the parliamentary elections of February 2019, sent an increasing number of people from Transnistria to vote in the elections in the Republic of Moldova,” stated Vladimir Socor.
Asked what the two will discuss now given the checkpoints that were unilaterally set up by the Transnistrian side, the analyst responded that the problem of illegal checkpoints appeared annually during over 20 years. There is now a different problem – the eventual participation of a large number of Transnistrian voters in the elections in the Republic of Moldova. “The Government will not only accept the bringing of Transnistrian voters, but will also try hard to favor this process. It is the task of the parliamentary opposition to alert the foreign observers and European governments and to oppose this phenomenon. There is no justification for the Transnistrian voters to take part in the elections in the Republic of Moldova. Transnistria is isolated from informational viewpoint from the rest of the Republic of Moldova. Transnistria is subject to an intense wave of Russian propaganda both from Moscow and from Tiraspol, which indoctrinates the population in Transnistria in the spirit of the Great Russia and the Russian world. The voters in Transnistria are uniformed. The parties and candidates of the Republic of Moldova cannot campaign in Transnistria as they are not allowed to. That’s why the bringing of Transnistrian voters to the right side can fatally destabilize the political balance on the right bank of the Nistru,” noted Vladimir Socor.
Asked who now seriously thinks about the political settlement of the Transnistrian conflict, the analyst said the political resolution prospects, no matter how this settlement is defined, are far away, but cannot be excluded.
On July 21, it was 28 years of the signing of the Moldovan-Russian ceasefire agreement of 1992. The document envisioned the immediate ceasing of fighting on the Nistru, creation of a Security Zone, constitution of peacekeeping forces of Russian, Moldovan and Transnistrian soldiers. After the agreement was signed, 12% of the Republic of Moldova’s territory, including the town of Tighina (Bender), de facto remained under the control of the illegitimate Transnistrian authorities.
