BILATERAL RELATIONS WILL BE FULLY RESTORED AFTER 2018 ELECTIONS IN MOLDOVA - RUSSIAN DEPUTY SPEAKER

After the 2018 parliamentary election in Moldova, the traditional Russia-Moldova relations will be "fully restored". Such an opinion was spoken out by Piotr Tolstoi, Deputy Speaker of the Russian State Duma [parliament] and Chairman of the Russia-Moldova Parliamentary Friendship Group, at the Tuesday's meeting with Moldovan colleagues in Moscow.

Tolstoi highlighted the two countries' common interests in economy, education, culture and many other spheres and voiced pity that last few years the level of cooperation between Russia and Moldova has gone down.

"Moldova has a gigantic plus - it has relations both with Russia and Europe, and we stand ready to share the experience of parliamentary work and of holding parliamentary campaigns", said the Russian Deputy Speaker.

The Moldovan delegation head, Chairperson of the Socialist faction in the Moldovan Parliament Zinaida Greceanii congratulated the Russian colleagues on the occasion of the Russian Constitution Day [December 12] and spoke out for further development of interaction between the two parliaments.

Greceanii voiced satisfaction that despite the current hard time for Moldova, the parties have nevertheless managed to rehabilitate the work of the Parliamentary Friendship Group, which held its last meeting in 2005, and the last visit to Moldova paid by Russian State Duma Chairman was in 2008.

"We want our Russian colleagues from the Parliamentary Friendship Group to visit our country next year. There are so many questions to tackle. The [101-member] Moldovan Parliament is represented in the Group by 64 deputies. This is the largest Friendship Group in our Parliament", said Group Chairperson Zinaida Greceanii.

The parties have reached a preliminary accord to hold the next meeting of the Parliamentary Friendship Group in Chisinau next summer.

As was already reported by Infotag, this time the Moscow meeting of the Group was attended by only 12 Moldovan parliamentarians. All of them represented the Party of Socialists. They went to Moscow fully at their personal expense because the pro-European leadership of the Parliament refused to delegate deputies to Moscow officially.