Transdniestria's Foreign Ministry condemns ban on vehicles with Transdniestrian plates entering Ukraine

TIRASPOL. Sept 1 (Interfax) – The Foreign Ministry of the unrecognized Transdniestrian Moldovan Republic has condemned Ukraine’s decision to ban vehicles with Transdniestrian registration plates from entering the country.

Tiraspol issued a statement on the matter after the corresponding ban took effect on Wednesday and the Ukrainian customs service stopped vehicles with Transdniestrian number plates from passing into Ukraine.

The Transdniestrian Foreign Ministry called Kyiv’s decision "destructive and a violation of the fundamental principles of the international negotiation process between Transdniestria and Moldova, restricting the rights of innocent people, including more than 80,000 Ukrainian citizens residing in Transdniestria, who are limited in their communication with relatives and loved ones."

"Such a measure will entail humanitarian and socioeconomic costs for residents of Transdniestria, including a wide range of business entities, and will inevitably lead to an escalation of regional tensions," the statement said.

"Such restrictive measures negatively affect the state of Moldovan-Transdniestrian dialogue," the authors of the statement said, urging the negotiators to assess Kyiv’s actions, which are at odds with the principles and content of existing agreements, and to prevent a full-scale transport blockade of Transdniestria.

Tiraspol has proposed that the negotiators in the 5+2 talks hold consultations on the current situation.

On Tuesday, Ukraine confirmed that it would impose a ban on vehicles with Transdniestrian registration plates entering the region starting September 1. The protocol decision, which was signed by the chief negotiators from Chisinau and Tiraspol on April 24, 2018, and the Moldovan governmental decrees stipulate that vehicles from Transdniestria are allowed to travel abroad only if they have "neutral" standard plates.

Moldova and Ukraine planned to ban vehicles with the symbols of Transdniestria from traveling abroad on January 1, 2020. Then, at the request of Chisinau, Kyiv postponed the entry into force of this decision to April 1, 2021, and after that, to September 1, 2021.

Over the past two years, only about 5,000 of the 110,000 vehicles in Transdniestria have been re-registered. In this regard, in late August, the Moldovan authorities asked the Ukrainian authorities to extend the current regulations for crossing the Moldovan-Ukrainian state border until January 10, 2022. A petition on this count from the Moldovan embassy in Kyiv to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was published on the Internet. However, Ukraine left its earlier decision unchanged.