— What is the history of Pridnestrovie before the collapse of the USSR?
— Historically, Transnistria has never been part of Moldova or Romania.
The northern part of Transnistria was once part of the Commonwealth.
South - Tatar Horde.
Then these territories became part of the Russian Empire.
The southern part was part of the Kherson province, and the northern part was part of the Podolsk province.
After the revolution of 1917, the territory of Transnistria remained in the sphere of influence of the emerging Soviet statehood.
The Odessa Soviet Republic was created.
And the right bank of the Dniester - Bessarabia - since 1918 was occupied by royal Romania.
In 1924, Transnistria became part of the Ukrainian SSR in the form of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - MASSR.
It became the basis for the emergence of Soviet Moldova.
The capital of the MASSR was at first Balta, then Kotovsk.
From 1929 to 1940 - Tiraspol.
In fact,
Pridnestrovie was the fundamental basis of the newest statehood of the Republic of Moldova.
During this period, the first university was opened here, industry was actively developing.
Such a rapid growth of industrial potential in the Soviet period, which took place in the MASSR, was not in Bessarabia, where the population was mainly engaged in agriculture.
In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, and in 1940 the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to royal Romania with a proposal to withdraw from the territory of Bessarabia.
To which the Romanian side was forced to agree, because it did not have the strength to resist the USSR.
And in 1940, this territory was annexed to the territory of the MASSR.
Bessarabia will be integrated into the production facilities of Transnistria.
The capital is transferred to Chisinau.
The Moldavian Socialist Republic is being created.
In 1941 the Great Patriotic War begins.
Royal Romania is returning again as a satellite of Nazi Germany.
And on this territory, the Transnistria Governorate of Romania is being created, within which ethnic cleansing is carried out.
Tens of thousands of people were killed.
In fact, the period of the joint existence of Transnistria and Bessarabia, present-day Moldova, is the Soviet era.
The bonds for this were the communist ideology, a single party, a single Soviet people.
Of course, it cemented.
Bessarabia, which overnight became the Moldavian SSR, turned into a blooming garden through the efforts of the entire Soviet Union.
The beautiful republic, located in the southwest of the USSR, was a kind of showcase for the Union.
Romania, compared with Soviet Moldova, looked completely faded at that time.
09/22/1966.
Moldavian SSR.
Workers of the viticultural state farm at the harvest
RIA News
© Fred Greenberg
- How did the separation of the Moldavian Union Republic from the USSR happen?
- In the late 1980s, the processes of the collapse of the Soviet Union were gaining momentum.
During this period, the Chisinau elites, with the help of Romanian politicians, began to build a mono-ethnic state.
In 1989, they began to actively cultivate the nationalist factor.
A nationalist organization, the Popular Front of Moldova, was created, which declared that Moldova was only for Moldovans, and Moldovans, in fact, were not Moldovans, but Romanians.
And the only language is Romanian.
Everyone else must either learn Romanian or leave this territory.
Russians and Ukrainians, who actually created the MSSR with their labor, engineers, teachers, intelligentsia, turned out to be occupiers.
The leadership of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR adopted a draft law on the language, which stated that there should be only the Romanian language.
— What was happening in Transnistria itself at that moment?
- On September 2, 1990, after the decisions were made by the Moldovan parliament, we held congresses of deputies of all levels, cities, regions of Pridnestrovie, and proclaimed Pridnestrovie.
But not as an independent state, but as a union republic within the USSR.
And the first name of Pridnestrovie was the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
It was proclaimed on September 2, 1990, when the Soviet Union still existed.
Moldova has actually already come out of there, trying to build its own state as the second Romanian one.
- It was then that the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic appeared on the map?
- It is very important to understand that legally it was the Moldovan side that prepared the legal grounds for the legal personality and independence of Pridnestrovie.
Because, in fact, it divided our territories until the moment of their unification in 1940.
And the next decision in August 1991 was the adoption of the Declaration of Sovereignty, where Moldova also does not say a word about Transnistria.
They say that the Soviet Union illegally created the MSSR, that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact has no consequences, that the Romanian language is the main language in Moldova.
These legal grounds divided our states, returned everything to the historical state, when we historically lived separately.
But the leadership of Moldova realized that they had made a political and legal mistake, in fact, tearing away Transnistria.
— How did the armed conflict in Transnistria start?
- The Moldovan authorities, having destroyed the Soviet past, continued to claim the territories that they got in Soviet times.
They decided to bring Transnistria under their control.
The first hostilities began in 1991.
The provocations were connected with terrorist acts against Pridnestrovians, many of whom were deputies of the Supreme Council of the union Moldavian Republic.
An attack was made on a military town where the families of Russian officers lived.
We had to protect them.
And in March 1992, Moldova unleashed an active phase of the conflict against Transnistria, which intensified.
And on June 19, 1992, an invasion was carried out into the city of Bendery, which was destroyed.
07/01/1992.
The Republic of Moldova.
Conflict in Transnistria.
Defenders of Bender
RIA News
© I. Zenin
The bloody conflict was put to an end by the Russian peacekeeping operation.
On July 21, 1992, the presidents of the Russian Federation and Moldova, in the presence of the president of Transnistria, signed an agreement on the principles for resolving the armed conflict.
And already on July 29, Russian peacekeepers were brought into Bendery and the republic.
From that moment on, we had a security zone that is still in effect today.
In July, we will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the unique effectiveness and success of the peacekeeping operation in Transnistria, which is being conducted under the auspices of Russia.
It consists of three contingents: Pridnestrovian, Moldovan and, of course, Russian.
- How did the relations between Moldova and Pridnestrovie develop after the establishment of peace?
- Pridnestrovie was ready to preserve the common national economic complex created by the USSR.
Therefore, in 1993, the Parliament of Transnistria adopted a resolution that we are creating, together with Moldova, the Transnistrian Moldavian Confederation.
And it existed until 2006, until the OSCE representatives declared that the settlement of relations between Moldova and Pridnestrovie according to this formula is impossible, that the rights and interests of the inhabitants of Pridnestrovie can be taken into account within the framework of the unitary state of Moldova.
Although any objective analysis showed that Moldova cannot become unitary within the boundaries of the Soviet era.
You can not return the Soviet period.
There are no more binding elements in the form of a single party, a single language, a single state.
It is necessary to look for new, more realistic ways of interaction and peaceful good neighborliness.
For 30 years we have been negotiating with Moldova, and all these years Chisinau is deaf and blind.
He does not want to take into account the position of the Pridnestrovian side and its international partners.
Over the years, we have signed about 200 agreements that the Moldovan side did not comply with.
The Moscow Memorandum was signed in 1997, where Pridnestrovie legally had its own rights, its state attributes, the right to freedom of foreign economic activity, a flag, a coat of arms, and an anthem.
There was Primakov's plan.
There was a project by Dmitry Kozak in 2003.
Then there was Yushchenko's Ukrainian plan in 2005.
Moldova also abandoned it and adopted a unilateral law, defining the status of Transnistria as part of Moldova.
Tiraspol
globallookpress.com
© Monika Skolimowska / dpa
This law has a certain legal force in the legislative field of Moldova.
And Moldova has not yet repealed this law.
And this is very important.
Because, according to this law, Moldova cannot negotiate with Transnistria.
That is, any representative of Moldova who negotiates with Pridnestrovie violates his own legislation.
In 2012, Chisinau again returned to the negotiating table in the international 5+2 format.
But the last meeting was held in October 2019 in Bratislava.
And since then there have been no more meetings.
— Is there economic pressure on the PMR?
- Since 2006, Moldova, with the help of Ukraine, has been strengthening measures of economic pressure on Pridnestrovie.
Our enterprises did not work for half a year.
There is still no direct telephone connection with Moldova.
Land use issues have not been resolved.
From 2019 to the present, the possibility of working with the accounts of our enterprises opened in Moldovan banks has been completely blocked.
We trade with Moldova, we receive the Moldovan currency.
We have the Transnistrian ruble, they have the Moldovan leu.
But we cannot convert Moldovan leu into foreign currency, because Moldovan banks prohibit these operations.
In fact, we accumulate lei, which we cannot use.
Now Moldova has taken advantage of the situation in Ukraine and organized a complete blockade, banning access to Pridnestrovie for food, medicines, plant protection products, and fertilizers.
Blocked the work of the largest metallurgical plant in Transnistria.
At present, our relations with Moldova are at a very low point, and the situation, unfortunately, continues to degrade.
— What is the main vector of foreign and domestic policy of the PMR?
- Initially, Pridnestrovie decided that our vector is pro-Russian.
We have kept all the best that was in the period of the Soviet Union.
We are not building an ethnocratic state, we are building a multinational state, respecting other peoples, other cultures and languages.
We have three factors that make up our national idea: we form a single Pridnestrovian people;
we are building a socially oriented state;
we achieve international recognition.
From the very beginning we were created on democratic methods.
We had seven referendums.
None in Moldova.
Nobody asked the Moldovan people where they want to go.
And we asked.
At the referendum on September 17, 2006, 97% of the people decided that we are building an independent state with a possible future accession to Russia.
But, first of all, we are building an independent state.
And this is the main vector that we put into practice.
And this greatly worries the West.
I believe that Pridnestrovie has all the necessary grounds to be an internationally recognized state, one of the legal successors of the Soviet MSSR.
Just as Bessarabia is a successor, so is Transnistria a successor.
Moreover, our state is primary, in relation to the Moldovan one.
— How many people now live in Transnistria? What is their national composition?
- According to the last census of 2015, 475 thousand people lived in our country.
Over the past two months, more than 25 thousand refugees from Ukraine arrived in Pridnestrovie.
Among them are about 700 children.
We have educational institutions in the Ukrainian language, where children who have arrived from Ukraine will be able to study in the language space that is most comfortable for them.
In general, representatives of more than 70 nationalities and nationalities live in Pridnestrovie.
— Is Moldovan and Romanian the same language?
- In fact, the Romanian language did not exist.
There was a Moldovan language based on Cyrillic graphics.
It is a language that is hundreds of years old.
But Romania, as such, did not exist until the second half of the 19th century.
But today, expert linguists believe that Moldovan is a kind of dialect of the Romanian language.
Moldova does not cultivate its own language.
And at the level of parliament, at the level of the Constitutional Court, the Declaration of Independence determined that they have the Romanian language.
The Moldovan language in the Cyrillic script was preserved only in Transnistria.
We have three official languages - Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan.
And this is the same language in which liturgical books, Moldavian poems of the XIV-XVI centuries, and so on are written.
In 2008, the Moldovan language was excluded from the international catalog of languages, ICO.
Legally, the Moldovan language does not exist documented anywhere.
There is a certain dialect of the Romanian language.
In 2013, a law was passed in Moldova that they have only Romanian as the state language.
Moldovan workers
Gettyimages.ru
© Pragher / ullstein bild
- In Moldova, Pridnestrovie is called Transnistria. Why?
- The Romanian ideologists, who gave impetus to the modern statehood of Moldova, built on the Romanian identity, call Pridnestrovie as the Romanians and Nazi Germany called these territories during the occupation.
Transnistria is the territory where the murders of Jews, Gypsies, and Communists took place.
Where there were monstrous victims.
This name is offensive to us.
We cannot accept the fact that our land was given the name that was used in the Third Reich.
This greatly offends the Jewish part of the population.
Because for the Jewish people Transnistria means the Holocaust, tragedy, pain.
Jewish public organizations, both international and Pridnestrovian, have repeatedly appealed to the Moldovan leadership with a call to stop calling it that.
But the Moldovan authorities continue to use this term.
By the way, in the documents of the negotiation process, Western representatives, in particular the OSCE, are careful not to call us Transnistria.
They add separate letters there and get Transnistria, tying it to the Dniester.
But it still sounds negative.
Therefore, we urge everyone not to use this term, it is exclusively biased and discredited by history.
06/01/1992.
On the streets of Bender.
Transnistria
RIA News
© I. Zenin
— How have relations between the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and Ukraine evolved all these years?
— During the military aggression of Moldova against Pridnestrovie, with the use of aviation, artillery, the destruction of cities and the national economic complex, Ukraine showed solidarity with the people of Pridnestrovie.
Both Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks stood up to protect Transnistria from Romanian expansion, from nationalism.
Ukraine received about 100 thousand refugees from Transnistria in 1992.
And we are very grateful to them.
We have over 400 kilometers of common border.
On the eastern side, Ukraine is our main neighbor.
Geography is fate.
Relations with Ukraine have been developing constructively for a long time.
Because Ukraine, along with Russia, has become one of the guarantors of the negotiation process.
But, unfortunately, the situation has worsened.
Now Ukraine at the official level declares that Pridnestrovie threatens them.
But Transnistria has no military plans against Ukraine.
We are an absolutely peaceful state.
And, if we do anything, we only help Ukrainian citizens who came to us in search of asylum.
We have no alternative to good neighborly relations.
— What is the current situation in Transnistria?
“We have witnessed a whole series of terrorist attacks since April 25th.
Yesterday, shelling from small arms and underbarrel grenade launchers was carried out in the direction of weapons depots in the village of Kolbasna.
These attacks are a challenge and a threat to us.
Those who organized them, and the traces lead to Ukraine, as the President of Transnistria has already said, aim to cause tension and destabilize society.
Now we ensure the safety of our citizens, and all guests of the republic.
We have secured vital centers, including roads.
Everything is done to prevent panic.
We are also in a state of information war.
Most of the websites of the authorities of Transnistria are subjected to a powerful DDOS attack, which has been going on for several days.
A lot of fakes come from Moldova.
And, unfortunately, from the Ukrainian side, too, in relation to Pridnestrovie, a lot of unreliable information is published on social networks.
This disturbs the population.
We urge our citizens to trust only official information, common sense, their eyes and ears.
- Photos of large flows of refugees from Transnistria appeared on the network. Is this true?
We had Easter holidays.
For this period, a simplified procedure for crossing the border has been introduced.
A lot of Pridnestrovians left, and a lot of Moldovan citizens came to visit us, to relatives and friends.
After the holidays, people began to return, and all this coincided with the strengthening of the border crossing regime after the attacks.
Inspection of each vehicle takes a certain time.
It is impossible to say that there is a mass exodus of residents of Transnistria.
There are no mobilization activities.
But the ill-wishers of Transnistria are trying to use any excuse to create internal tension.
They make different shots.
— Could you tell us in more detail what the object in the village of Kolbasna is like?
- When Soviet troops were withdrawn from Germany in the 1980s, ammunition from the Western Group of Forces was brought to these warehouses.
The 14th Combined Arms Guards Army was stationed on the territory of Transnistria.
These were one of the largest warehouses in the western and southwestern direction.
Up to 44 thousand tons of ammunition were stored there.
Currently - about 20 thousand tons.
These are gigantic volumes.
This facility belongs to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
The operational group of Russian troops is implementing the necessary security regime.
The object is protected professionally.
But, given the difficult situation, and given the alarms associated with the shots in the direction of this object, we are all extremely concerned about this.