Mija: Relations with Russia Will Resume when Moscow Shows Respect

Moldovan Foreign Ministry State Secretary Valeriu Mja said that relations with Russia are now at their lowest level and can be resumed only if the principles of mutual respect are observed. He said this on the air of the programme Otkrytyi Dialog (Open Dialogue) on the news portal Deschide.md. “Relations between Moldova and the Russian Federation are unfortunately the most tense in history, and there are three reasons for this. The first is the war in Ukraine. Our leaders have been to Ukraine and have seen the war crimes with their own eyes. We must recognize this fact, and the population must know that even the UN General Assembly has condemned Russia as an aggressor state. The second reason is Russia’s interference in the local elections in Moldova, which has already been proven by the investigative bodies. The support of certain internal political players by methods that are incomprehensible to us is also a confirmed reality. The third reason is the intensification of hybrid warfare elements,” Mija said. He said one of the most “sensitive and annoying” consequences of Russia’s destabilizing actions are the violation of Moldovan airspace by Russian missiles and drones. “Since September 2022, we have recorded many such cases, but the latest ones were particularly egregious - two drones, one of which was packed with explosives, entered the territory of the Republic of Moldova and, unfortunately, one of them exploded. Furthermore, our radars confirmed that ballistic missiles launched by Russia to hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, particularly in Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts, crossed our country’s airspace,” the state secretary of the Foreign Ministry said. Even more outrageous, he said, is the fact that Russia has never recognized the incidents, each time demanding “clear evidence”. “Such attitude is inadmissible if we want to build good ties. However, we believe that if certain circumstances change, a revision of relations is possible. We realize that there is a lot of emotion in this issue, that the war in Ukraine continues, and there is also a psychological war going on. All these realities make us realize that we need to build relations on clear principles based on mutual respect. If this principle is observed, we can talk about restarting bilateral relations,” he added.