MOSCOW, January 22./TASS/. Transnistria has come out against the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from its soil, President of Transnistria, Vladimir Krasnoselsky, said on Monday.

"On July 21, 2017, the Moldovan parliament passed a decision which envisaged the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, replacing the peacekeeping mission with some civilian mission, some vague police, or ‘[blue] helmets,’ and so forth," Krasnoselsky said as he met with the chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Committee for International Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev. "This decision is absolutely unacceptable for us," he emphasized.

The Transnistrian conflict broke out in March 1992 when initial clashes erupted between Moldovan police and Transnistrian militia near the city of Dubossary, followed by an outbreak of armed hostilities. By the summer, it had spiraled into a large-scale conflict in Bendery, where about 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands were wounded and ended up as refugees.

The civil war was brought to an end following a peace agreement signed in Moscow in July 1992 and Russian peacekeepers were brought into the conflict zone.

Since then, they have been maintaining peace and calm in the region, together with their Moldovan and Transnistrian colleagues as well as a group of military observers from Ukraine, thus allowing Chisinau and Tiraspol to conduct negotiations on settling the conflict regarding the breakaway republic.