Bender, 29 March. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. A regular meeting of the Joint Control Commission (JCC) began with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of a fire in a shopping mall in Russia's Kemerovo. The accident killed 64 people, including 41 children.
At the beginning, the JCC approved a new senior military commander from Russia. Colonel Oleg Nikolaevich Leukhin started to perform his duties in the Security Zone. The commission thanked the outgoing chief of the Russian peacekeeping contingent, whose term of service came to an end. "Today we thanked the senior military commander from the Russian Federation Sergey Rybakov for the committed duty. We are well aware that thanks to the efforts of the Russian side we now have peace and stability," said Oleg Belyakov, co-chairman of the JCC from Pridnestrovie.
After hearing a report by the Joint Military Command (JMC) on the situation in the Security Zone, the sides continued to discuss the infrastructure of the Bychok-Gura-Bicului bridge.
"We just need to instruct the monitoring group of military observers to carefully find out what is happening there [on the bridge]. But one of the sides, in particular, Moldova, is blocking the on-site inspections of the bridge by the military observers. Without any real grounds, it is inappropriate to make a noise" says Oleg Belyakov.
At the same time, he said, the parties are close to making a final decision on this issue.
The JCC and the JMC should make a decision to modernise peacekeeping posts near the bridge not to interfere with the movement of transport, on the one hand, and to ensure its security, on the other hand.
Located on the international highway M14, which connects Brest, Kishinev and Odessa, the bridge was destroyed in 1992 during Moldova's armed aggression against Pridnestrovie. In 2001 the bridge was restored but remained closed to traffic due to disagreements between Moldova and Pridnestrovie on a number of key issues.
The agreement to open the bridge was reached after President Krasnoselsky had sent a letter on 16 October 2017 to the participants of the "5+2" format with a request to establish cooperation in the transport and customs spheres, suggesting the resumption of motor traffic across the bridge.
The official opening ceremony of the bridge took place on 18 November 2017. Only cars weighing up to 3.5 tons were allowed to use it in the first months. On 31 January 2018, the experts signed a protocol increasing this limit to 10 tonnes.
