CHISINAU, December 8. /TASS/. Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean believes that the conflict in Transnistria will be settled after the withdrawal of Russian troops not only from the unrecognized republic, as Chisinau has long insisted, but also from the territory of neighboring Ukraine.
"Any discussion of a settlement must begin with demilitarization. This in practice means that Russian citizens, the military servicemen, must leave. And military equipment, too. This will happen in a normal way with the demilitarization of Ukraine," Recean said on the JurnalTV channel. He explained that he understood demilitarization as "the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine."
A group of Russian troops (about 1,000 soldiers and officers) is stationed in Transnistria to guard the warehouses where more than 20,000 tons of ammunition, redeployed there after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from European countries, are stored. Also, the group supports the peacekeepers, who were moved to the region in 1992 in accordance with the 1992 agreement and have been keeping peace in the region for thirty years, along with their counterparts from Moldova and Transnistria. After Ukraine cut off the supply routes through its territory, the peacekeepers found themselves under blockade.
Chisinau not only insists on the withdrawal of the Russian troops, but also suggests replacing the peacekeepers by a civilian mission under an international mandate. However, the Transnistrian authorities are firmly against this. They recall that such a mission failed to prevent an armed conflict in 1992, in which more than a thousand people died and tens of thousands were wounded. Tiraspol also accused Chisinau of impeding negotiations. It remains concerned about the militarization of Moldova, which has intensified arms purchases as well as military cooperation with the US, EU and NATO.