Tiraspol, January 31. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. Over the past year, Chisinau has noticeably stepped up pressure on Pridnestrovie. At the same time, it withdrew itself from the Moldovan-Pridnestrovian negotiations: official meetings in the international format 5 + 2 have not been held for more than three years, the Moldovan side does not fulfill the agreements signed earlier, there are no high-level meetings between the heads of Pridnestrovie and Moldova.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PMR Vitaly Ignatiev spoke about this in his interview with the Vzglyad newspaper.
“Chisinau takes advantage of the fact that Ukraine has closed the border with our republic since last February, and almost immediately we had problems with medicines, food, and essential goods. The freedom of movement of Pridnestrovians is limited. These new problems have been superimposed on the financial and banking blockade of Pridnestrovie, which has been going on since 2019,” Vitaly Ignatiev noted.
He recalled that the problem of politically motivated criminal cases against Pridnestrovian officials, entrepreneurs, and citizens also remains. “The egregious case of kidnapping and subsequent conviction in a fabricated case of a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the PMR, Andrey Samoniy, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for acts that he did not commit, is indicative,” the Head of the Foreign Ministry cited as an example.
At the same time, the problem of politically motivated criminal cases may worsen if the Moldovan Parliament adopts the so-called “law on separatism” in the final reading.
“We regard [it] as a repressive tool for political pressure through the methods of criminal prosecution. It will be possible to find an article not only for a civil servant or negotiator, for example, people from my team, but also for any resident of Pridnestrovie, including citizens of Russia,” Vitaly Ignatiev emphasized.
He recalled that the President of Pridnestrovie, Vadim Krasnoselsky, had repeatedly urged the President of Moldova, Maya Sandu, in writing to resume the practice of high-level meetings. But these invitations are ignored.
“I still have meetings with the Moldovan political representative [Oleg Serebryan], yet they do not end with concrete results. For example, last summer, expert groups from Moldova and Pridnestrovie agreed to expand the list of medicines allowed for import into our republic, but the leadership in Chisinau does not give the go-ahead. This means that it does not intend to relieve tension in our relations,” Vitaly Ignatiev stated.
