Sandu invited Zelensky to spoil Transnistria together
Moldovan Prime Minister Maia Sandu advocates tightening controls on the Ukrainian-Transnistrian border, which she calls the Ukrainian-Moldavian border.
She said this today in Kyiv, where she is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“We want to establish permanent and complete joint control over the border in order to protect the border from crime and smuggling,” Sandu said.
Today, before his visit to Kyiv, Sandu’s adviser in the field of foreign policy, Vladislav Kulminsky, made a statement on this topic. He demanded the resignation of the Ambassador of Moldova to Austria and the OSCE, Viktor Osipov, who is allegedly one of the organizers of cigarette smuggling through the Transnistrian region.
“In 2014, 10 billion cigarettes passed through Pridnestrovie. In 2015, after Ukraine banned the export of cigarettes through Transnistria, Shor (businessman Ilan Shor fled Moldova after the change of government - ed.) legalized the illegal export of cigarettes through duty-free shops in the Transnistrian region. The volume of smuggling increased significantly in 2019 - almost a billion cigarettes in May alone,” Kulminsky wrote on his Facebook.
He proposed closing duty-free shops on the territory of Transnistria, discussing with the Ukrainian side joint control of the Transnistrian segment of the border and opening eight more joint checkpoints, as well as extending the EU monitoring mission for border assistance in Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM).
A few hours later, Sandu herself published a declassified information note on Facebook, from which it follows that 75% of duty-free goods illegally entered Moldova. Moreover, some goods were immediately supplied to the country, and some of the goods were smuggled to Ukraine and Romania.
Ukraine and Moldova opened joint checkpoints on the Transnistrian border in 2017. Transnistrian President Vadim Krasnoselsky regarded this step as the beginning of an economic blockade of the unrecognized republic.
As a reminder, Moldovan President Igor Dodon previously also spoke in support of the blockade of the Transnistria Republic, declaring a shared vision with pro-Western parties in the Republic of Moldova for a solution to the Transnistria problem. Dodon denied Transnistria the prospect of an independent existence.
“Moldova has no future without Pridnestrovie. And Transnistria has no future. When someone says from the left bank that “we were not together...” - you and the Ukrainians were together, so do you want to go to Ukraine? You need to choose, our dear Pridnestrovians. There will never be independence. There will be no status of a subject of the Russian Federation. But we will find a form for unification within a single state – a federal one. Let’s sit down and discuss this,” Dodon said.
Sandu suggested Zelenskyy and her teammates work together to mess up Transnistria.