Transnistria and Gagauzia

RUSSIAN MFA REGRETS MOLDOVA-UKRAINE BORDER CONTROL AT CUCIURGAN

21 july, 2017

The official launching on July 17 of the joint Moldo-Ukrainian border/customs control at Cuciurgan border-crossing station in the Ukraine territory "is causing regret", Artiom Kozhin, Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated at a press briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

He stressed that the stakeholders have thus ignored the known concerns of Transnistria's about this step made by Chisinau and Kiev without consultations with Tiraspol.

Kozhin stated that Transnistria "is justly saying this action goes contrary to the accords reached in the process of the Transnistrian conflict settlement that all disputable matters must be solved exclusively at the negotiating table and that actions by one conflict side may not bring harm to the other side". (All in all, Moldova and Ukraine are going to open 13 such jointly-run border-crossing stations on the common border.)

"Big questions are being caused by the "added value" of the Cuciurgan station equipped, by the way, for the European Union money (6 million euros), bearing in mind the many-year-long activities in that region run by the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM). And all this is happening against the background of the Brussels' known habit to speculate about Transnistria's having no other alternative except joining the EU-Moldova Association Agreement. Are these not elements of an external pressure?" questioned Artiom Kozhin.

He emphasized that Russia, as a guarantor and mediator to the Transnistrian conflict settlement, stands against creating whatever new irritators in the Chisinau-Tiraspol relations.

"We are convinced that a sincere and interested discussion of the economic component of the Cuciurgan problem within the 5+2 negotiating format could reduce the sharpness of the problem", the Russian MFA spokesman said, stressing that Moscow is standing for a soonest-possible convocation of an official meeting in the 5+2 negotiating format.

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