KIEV, June 8. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed a law severing the treaty with Russia on the transit of military to Moldova, the Ukrainian parliament said on its website.
The agreement between the governments of Russia and Ukraine on the transit of Russian military units, temporarily stationed in Moldova, was concluded back in 1995.
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However, on May 21 the Ukrainian parliament voted for severing the agreement. According to the explanatory note, the agreement "is fraught with a direct threat to national security and the territorial integrity of Ukraine."
The foreign minister of the self-proclaimed republic of Transdniestria, Nina Shtanski, said that Ukraine’s refusal to let through Russian military was upsetting the peacekeeping format in the region and putting a big question mark over Kiev’s role in the Transdniestria settlement talks.
She said that "action shaking loose the peacekeeping format in the security zone of the Transdniestrian conflict is impermissible."
Russian peacekeepers in Moldova
Joint peacekeeping forces of Russia, Moldova and Transdniestria, as well as a group of military observers from Ukraine are now maintaining peace on the two banks of the Dniester River. No violence outbreaks have been recorded in the region during their presence, which allowed Chisinau and Tiraspol to negotiate peaceful settlement of disputes.
Moldova says the conflict is over and calls for changing the existing peacekeeping format by deploying an international mission of OSCE observers. Transdniestria says Russia’s military presence in the unrecognized republic guarantees its security.