CHISINAU, December 24. /TASS/. Leader of the unrecognized republic of Transnistria Vadim Krasnoselsky has invited Moldovan President Maia Sandu to discuss issues of comprehensive settlement of the Transnistrian conflict, according to Krasnoselsky’s letter to Sandu, which was made public by his press service on Friday.

"I am convinced that today we have a change to resolve a historic matter - to end one of the most protracted conflicts in Eastern Europe. We should limit ourselves to discussing individual political, socio-political and humanitarian problems, we can and, hence, we must make the next step - to sit down at the negotiating table and begin to discuss comprehensive settlement of the conflict," the letter says.

He suggested that basic aspects of such settlement be discussed at a personal meeting or in any other agreed format.

This is Krasnoselsky’s second message to the Moldovan president. In early December, he called for unblocking the negotiating process.

Earlier, Tiraspol refused to discuss political matters, which Chisinau insisted on. Transnistria called for focusing on removing barriers and improving living standards on both banks of the Dniester River. It insisted on continuing the practice of small steps to build up trust.

Transnistria, a largely Russian-speaking region, broke away from Moldova following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its relations with Moldova’s central government in Chisinau have been highly mixed and extremely tense at times ever since then. In 1992 and 1993, tensions erupted into a bloody armed conflict that claimed the lives of hundreds of people on both sides.

The fratricidal war was stopped after a peace agreement was signed in Moscow in 1992 and Russian peacekeepers were brought into the conflict area. Negotiations on the conflict’s peace settlement known as the 5+2 format talks (involving Moldova and Transnistria as parties to the conflict, Russia, Ukraine and the European security watchdog OSCE as mediators and the United States and the European Union as observers) started after that.

The settlement talks began to lose momentum in 2019 amid the election campaigns in Moldova. Not a single round of 5+2 talks was organized in 2020. A number of agreements between Chisinau and the unrecognized republic are now in a suspended state.