CHISINAU, February 20. /TASS/. Moldova’s former President Igor Dodon has lambasted the current authorities’ calls for beefing up the countries' military forces and joining NATO as dangerous.
"It is very dangerous. Moldovans want tranquility, peace and neutrality. They are categorically against joining NATO or any destabilization of the situation in Transnistria," he said in a video address posted on his Telegram channel on Monday.
He also drew attention to the remarks by Moldova’s new Prime Minister Dorin Recean, who said that it is necessary to demilitarize Transnistria. "I wonder, how is he going to do it? Does he want to unleash a war there?" Dodon said.
Presenting his cabinet’s program to the parliament, Recean called for withdrawing Russian troops from the unrecognized republic of Transnistria and for eliminating weapons depots there. He stressed, however, that he would use diplomatic means to achieve these goals.
Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the zone of combat operations in Transnistria in late July 1992 under an agreement on peaceful settlement of the armed conflict in Moldova’s Transnistrian region. The move helped stop the confrontation between the Moldovan police and Transnistrian militias. Currently, peace in the region is being maintained by Russian, Moldovan and Transnistrian peacekeepers.
Apart from that, a Russian group of forces of around 1,000 soldiers and officers is deployed to the region to ensure the security of depots holding more than 20,000 tons of munitions that were put in storage there after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from European countries. A weapons and munitions withdrawal and disposal campaign started in 2001, but in 2004 the Transnistrian authorities cut it short following a deterioration in relations with Moldova. These troops are also supporting the peacekeepers who have found themselves literally under blockade after Ukraine blocked logistics routes through its territory.
Meanwhile, Chisinau insists on the withdrawal of the Russian group of forces and calls for replacing the peacekeepers with a civilian mission with an international mandate. However, Tiraspol recalls that back in 1992 such a mission had failed to prevent an armed conflict that claimed more than 1,000 lives and left tens of thousands wounded.