TRANSNISTRIA LEADER WELCOMES SENDING SOVIET TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN AND PRESENCE OF RUSSIAN TROOPS IN SYRIA

The Soviet military contingent came to Afghanistan not with war but with peace. For several decades, Soviet specialists and workers were developing infrastructure there – building schools, hospitals, roads, dwelling houses. And the Soviet military were holding terrorism and drug traffic in check, Transnistria president Vadim Krasnoselsky stated during the official meeting held in Tiraspol on Wednesday on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Krasnoselsky voiced confidence that if there had been no Soviet soldiers, Afghanistan would see the soldiers of NATO or ISIL on its land yet earlier.

“And today Russia, realizing again its role of a geopolitical power, is fulfilling its international duty in Syria defending the interests of the Russian Federation, too. The Soviet warriors-internationalists began in the Afghan war what Russia is continuing today”, said the Tiraspol leader.

Igor Buga, Chairman of the Transnistrian Association of Afghan war Veterans, attributed the Afghanistan events to the category of inevitable wars “because at that time Moscow just could not act differently”.

“Subsequent years have shown that we were there not in vain. For 10 years, we were keeping within Afghanistan borders the young emerging international terrorism and a massive drug traffic from penetrating into the USSR territory. Soviet civilian specialists were building roads, factories and plants, social objects. Our medical specialists were reviving the public health sector of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. And the local population remembers our labor on the Afghan land”, said the veteran.