Ambassador of the Russian Foreign Ministry: Rollback in Transdniestrian Settlement is Evident

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The reasons for a sudden rollback of the parties in the Transdniestrian settlement and the prospects to overcome this situation were explained by Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large Sergey Gubarev. This year was exceptionally low-efficient for the negotiation process on the Transdniestrian settlement. We have repeatedly talked about the reasons. In many respects, the electoral and post-electoral processes on the right bank of the Dniester in Chisinau played a role here. They were really difficult. The year witnessed three changes in government in Chisinau, and accordingly, three deputy prime ministers for reintegration who are involved in the negotiation process. Therefore, of course, the year was difficult from the negotiations viewpoint,” Gubarev said, tass.ru reports. According to the diplomat, the only official 5+2 meeting held in October in Bratislava had in general no results. “The number of meetings of working groups decreased, and most importantly, the substantive content of expert discussions reduced, that is, there has definitely been no headway. Regression is observed on some issues, for example, regarding the use of neutral license plates by Transndiestrians. Another example: at a meeting in Bratislava, the issue of launching a trolleybus line from Bender to Varnitsa was discussed in detail and in a very substantive way. However, in recent weeks the word “trolleybus” has disappeared from the lexicon of both Chisinau and Tiraspol representatives. In my opinion, this is just a vivid demonstration of how the parties rolled back to the 2015 situation, when no bilateral contacts really took place,” the Russian diplomat added. In addition, Gubarev regrets that the issue of neutral license plates was not settled right from the beginning, and any ways to resolve it are not yet visible. “A lot of things were discussed – how the numbers will be issued, who will issue them, under what terms. But later such a detail came to light that the Moldovan side, as it turned out, considers the Moldovan driver’s license availability to be an indispensable condition for issuing these license plates, and in order to get this Moldovan driver’s license, Transdniestrians must submit the relevant Moldovan documents – passport or residence permit. Thus, the significant number of the Transdniestrian residents is deprived of the possibility to use these neutral license plates: citizens of Russia or Ukraine who do not have Moldovan documents, but live in Transdniestria in accordance with the rules existing there. Of course, this fact significantly reduced the interest of Transdniestrians in obtaining neutral license plates, and, as far as I am informed, even the influx of people wishing to register for vehicles in Tiraspol and Rybnitsa decreased,” Gubarev added.