Tiraspol blocked the working meeting of the political representatives at which it was planned to approve the mechanism of providing humanitarian aid by Chisinau to the inhabitants of the region

The Bureau for reintegration policies informs with great regret that Tiraspol rejected the proposal to organize a meeting of political representatives in the process of negotiations for the Transnistrian settlement from Chișinău and Tiraspol to discuss the formula for granting humanitarian aid to residents of the Transnistrian region of the country and the ways of cooperation between the two banks in order to overcome the impact of the energy and social crisis. The meeting, requested by Chișinău, was to take place on Friday, at 10:00, although Chisinau, given the urgency of the subject, was willing to meet earlier this week.

At the meeting, Chișinău wanted to obtain a response from Tiraspol on the supply of coal from Ukraine to ensure the activity of the Moldovan Thermoelectric Power Plant; to determine the urgent needs for hospitals, educational institutions, social centers; to ensure freedom of access to ambulances from the right bank of the Nistru River to pick up patients in serious condition from the region; to creat of an ad hoc group on crisis management.

Taking into account that Tiraspol can no longer invoke any dangers in Chișinău for the representatives of its delegation and considering that since 2023 all meetings were held either in Tiraspol, or in Bender, or online, in flagrant violation of the principle of alternating the venue of negotiations in 1+1 format, we proposed either to organize this meeting in Chișinău or, if the Tiraspol delegation insists that it feels insecure in the Moldovan capital, to have a meeting in videoconference format.

As a reminder, since all meetings of political representatives and working groups in physical format in recent times were held exclusively within the perimeter uncontrolled by the constitutional authorities, the access of journalists from the right bank was permanently restricted (only one journalist was able to participate in two such meetings). Unfortunately, even the OSCE mission could not ensure the access of Moldovan journalists to these events, held in the headquarters of the mission in Bender and Tiraspol.

Chișinău remains open to dialogue and ready to help citizens in the perimeter outside control by constitutional authorities. We believe that, under the current circumstances, even a videoconference meeting would be a step forward: we would be able to unlock certain processes that can help citizens in need.