​MOLDOVAN REINTEGRATION BUREAU SAYS TIRASPOL REPORTS FALSE POPULATION DATA

Moldova’s National Bureau for Country Reintegration believes that during his visit to Moscow last week, Transnistria president Vadim Krasnoselsky presented false data on the region’s population.

The Bureau wrote in its commentary today that according to the Moldovan National Agency for Public Services, as of August 31, 2019 as many as 332,861 residents of the Transnistrian region held documents on hands certifying their being Republic of Moldova citizens, “which constitutes 71% to 95% total population of Transnistria”.

While visiting the Russian State Duma [parliament] on September 25, Vadim Krasnoselsky said during his meeting with Russian deputies that Transnistria is home to 220 thousand citizens of the Russian Federation, plus another 150 thousand Transnistrians have legal grounds and, mostly, a desire to receive the Russian citizenship, but due to various circumstances in previous years they had to obtain the citizenships of other states – mostly of Moldova and Ukraine.

The latest official data on the population of the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldovan Republic are dating back to end-2017, when the population constituted 469 thousand people, according to the Transnistrian government’s official data. However, the government underlined then that the demographic situation was remaining fairly complicated: last 10 years only, the region’s population has shrunk by 58.5 thousand people (11.1%). About one-third of Transnistrians are absent, working abroad.