Chisinau, April 14 (Infotag). Experts from the Russian Institute of Strategic Researches and Reforms (RISI) convened a news conference in Infotag today, and presented their book entitled “The Republic of Moldova: Modern Development Trends”.

RISI Director professor Evgeny Kozhokin said the book is a part of a series dedicated to former USSR nations. It is intended for scientific-research organizations and for providing better information to supreme legislative and executive organs.

Director of the Moldovan Center for Strategic Researches and Reforms Dr. Anatoly Gudym said the book is a research of economic, social and political processes in Moldova and Transnistria. In his opinion, Russia has 3 kinds on interests in this republic – geopolitical, investment, and protection of its citizens living here.

The edition’s 4 sections are dedicated to economic situation and reforms, external ties, politics, ethnic groups, religion. The authors made an assessment of Moldova’s relationships with the Russian Federation and the European Union.

Touching on European integration processes, Yevgeny Kozhokin said that the European Union is increasingly assuming the traits of a state with its own, certain values. Many EU member countries renounce certain state functions, such as national defense and security, relegating them to the NATO.

The Moscow professor qualified as “a challenge, in a certain sense” the intention by Turkey and Ukraine to join the European Union. In his opinion, these 2 countries would hardly agree to minor, secondary-importance roles in the Union. On the other side, the EU has not yet shaped a clear-cut stance on the enlargement of membership in the European Union where a gap between the living standards in its member states is becoming wider and wider.

The RISI Director believes the Transnistria conflict can hardly ever be resolved without an account of its populace’s position on that problem, and this position differs from that of Moldova’s and many other countries’ and organizations’.

More than one-third of the book volume is dedicated to the Transnistrian question. The authors expressed regret that a good chance was missed to resolve the Transnistria conflict – the Kozak Memorandum. They qualify the present day relationship between Chisinau and Tiraspol as a “depressive and negative”, writing that a decade of separate living has generated new problems: during those years, two relatively independent socio-political systems have come into being, as well as 2 power elites, with their separate tangible interests.

The book’s circulation is 800 copies, and a part of it will be given as a gift to Moldovan universities. This is the first publication of that kind about Moldova published in Russia since 1991.