Russian Ambassador Calls on Moldovan Authorities to Respect the Rights of Russian-Speaking Citizens

Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Moldova Oleg Vasnetsov drew attention to the need to respect the rights of Russian-speaking citizens of the country at a meeting with new head of the Agency for Interethnic Relations of Moldova Nicolae Radita. This is stated in a statement circulated on Thursday by the diplomatic press service on Facebook. “The ambassador of Russia focused on the need for legislative consolidation of the status of the Russian language as an instrument of interethnic communication and the preservation of Russian language educational institutions,” the press service said. Pro-European parties and politicians who favor unification with Romania are behind the idea to narrow theuseof Russian language in Moldova. A conflict situation arose in the summer of 2018, when the Constitutional Court declared the law “On the functioning of languages ​​on the territory of the Moldavian SSR” of 1989 obsolete, according to which the Russian language was assigneda status of the language of interethnic communication. Then, protests of Russian-speaking residents began in Moldova, but the problem receded into the background against a backdrop of political instability in the country. Point