CHISINAU, January 28. /TASS/. Talk on the Transnistrian problem in the 5+2 format 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 can be resumed after the situation in Ukraine is settled, Moldova Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Oleg Serebrian said.

"As long as relations between Kiev and Moscow continue to be as they are now, we will not be able to talks about unfreezing this negotiating format, which has not been cancelled officially, but has only been frozen," he said in an interview with Radio Moldova.

He said earlier that all parties to the 5+2 format attend bilateral meetings between negotiators from Moldova and Transnistria, which are occasionally organized. Informal discussions between the mediators continue, he noted.

Transnistria, a largely Russian-speaking region on the left bank of the Dniester River, broke away from Moldova in September 1990 when radical Moldovan politicians demanded that the republic withdraw from the former Soviet Union and unify with Romania. Its relations with Moldova’s central government in Chisinau have been highly mixed and extremely tense at times ever since then. In 1992, after Chisinau tried to resolve the problem with the use of force, 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 ceasefire was signed in 1992 and Russian peacekeepers were brought into the conflict area. Negotiations on the conflict’s peace settlement known as the 5+2 format started after that.

The latest official meeting in the 5+2 format was held in Bratislava in 2019. The pause was first explained by political instability in Moldova but then relations between the two Dniester banks became still more strained after Maia Sandu was elected Moldovan president. She made a series of tough statements about Transnistria and refused to meet with its president, Vladimir Krasnoselsky.

Meanwhile, Transnistria insists the talks in this format be resumed unconditionally and accuses Chisinau of violating agreements. Earlier, the OSCE mission to Moldova also admitted that the break in the negotiating process had added to the tensions between Moldova and Transnistria.