MOSCOW, February 20. /TASS/. Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean's statements that Russian peacekeepers should be withdrawn from Transnistria are counterproductive and unacceptable, Foreign Minister of unrecognized Transnistria Vitaly Ignatiev said on Monday.

On February 16, Recean, who was at the time a candidate for the Prime Minister seat, presented the program and composition of the new government to the country's parliament for approval, advocating the withdrawal of Russian troops from unrecognized Transnistria and the demilitarization of the region.

"The Moldovan side has been saying for almost three decades that the peacekeeping operation must be reformatted, stressing that Russian troops must be withdrawn and so on. <...> The situation is very disturbing, the context is also quite complicated. That is why we believe that the only way we can think about ending the peacekeeping operation is by reaching a final, just, comprehensive settlement of the Moldovan-Transnistrian conflict. Only then can we think anything about a peacekeeping operation. Anything else is, of course, unacceptable and counterproductive," he said during a Rossiya-24 TV broadcast.