CHISINAU, December 12. /TASS/. Transnistrian Foreign Minister Vitaly Ignatyev has refuted Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Valeriu Chiveri’s statements about a supposed invitation to hold a dialogue.
"We have received a written refusal from the Moldovan side, Mr. Chiveri’s refusal to meet with political directors. He said in this document that we have a lot of problems, and he listed these problems, so, a positive dynamic in problems may lead to a meeting in the future. Clearly, this is an absolutely contradictory and absurd position because it is necessary to do something to resolve these problems. Meetings between political directors are needed, a dialogue is needed, discussions are needed, decisions, coordination are needed, and so on. But the man simply put forth some preliminary conditions and recused himself," he said in an interview with the First Transnistrian television channel.
Chiveri told a conference in Chisinau on Thursday that he had sent an address to Tiraspol’s political director inviting him to discuss a range of problems the Moldovan side is concerned over.
Tiraspol said earlier that the Moldovan side had blocked negotiations. After Ukraine closed the Transnistrian section of the border with Moldova in 2022, people and commodities from the unrecognized republic can move only via Moldova-controlled territories. Tiraspol accused Chisinau of using Transnistria’s vulnerability to block trade and exert pressure. It has repeatedly called for resuming dialogue in any format.
Talks on the Transnistrian settlement in the 5+2 format (Moldova, Transnistria, the OSCE, Russia, Ukraine and observers from the United States and the European Union) have been frozen since 2019. According to the Russian mission to the OSCE, the pause in talks triggered an escalation between the Dniester’s banks.