Yevgeniy Shevchuk, who won the presidential elections in Transdniestria at the end of 2011, visited Moscow yesterday. The leader of the unrecognized republic met Patriarch Kirill and held a press conference to speak about the problems of Transdniestria.
On economy
In order to achieve development in our current economic situation we need to attract foreign investment. We understand that, and in order to create more favorable conditions we have introduced a number of draft laws regarding taxation preferences, the formation of free trade zones and tax ‘vacations’ for those investors who wish to invest in Transdniestria and who have never worked with us before. We are ready to take unprecedented measures of tax-free status for investors in order to create conditions for increasing the number of jobs for our citizens. All these drafts will be discussed by the parliament in April-May and I hope they’ll accept them. In addition, we will propose a number of draft laws on decreasing the non-tax regulation of various economic activities in order to prevent an excessive administrative burden on our future investors.
On relations with Chisinau
We have a long history of negotiations. In these 20 years we have tried to reach an agreement on the political status of Transdniestria on various occasions, but this ‘brainstorm’ didn’t bring us any results. Now we see that we need to pursue a different path. We want to give priority to the civic issues vital for Transdniestrian and Moldovan citizens, to solve the questions that were previously shaded by political discussions: the issues of travel, of trade… We believe that the tactic of minor deeds can help us build up mutual trust and interaction in the areas of the economy, culture and sport, as well as create a more favorable environment for future resolution of our political issues. In our opinion, creating artificial barriers in the economy is unwise at least. But there are such barriers today, and that doesn’t help us attract investors to Transdniestria or Moldova. Transdniestria borders on Moldova, so I think the abovementioned tactics are beneficial for both of us, it should promote trust – we talk about it a lot, but in fact there’s not much progress here. That is why we’ve introduced a proposition to simplify the border-crossing formalities with Ukraine and Moldova. We have also made some suggestions – and implemented them – on broadening our trade relations with Ukraine and Moldova, we made suggestions on restoring rail and road routes and telephone connections with Moldova. All these everyday-life amendments should be carried out prior to returning to our political differences.
On the peace-making format
Today we find ourselves in a situation when the acting agreement on settlement principles was signed in 1992, after the war. And after that, in these 20 years, we have failed to come to a political solution that would be acceptable to both parties. We haven’t signed any new paper that would define the status of Transdniestria. So the situation is still in a state of latent conflict. The conflict can be easily seen in our economies, in information policies and in diplomacy. So the peacemaking forces today really maintain peace on Dniester. We haven’t come to any compromise in 20 years; our positions haven’t changed, so the necessity of the peacekeeping operation, in our opinion, hasn’t decreased even a bit. We think that, until a comprehensive document covering all aspects of our interaction with our neighbors is accepted, the peacekeeping forces should remain here. We know that our partners propose otherwise. But we think that it is not the topic we should discuss in our negotiations now, I’ve already listed a number of more pressing issues: economic problems, problems of transport, etc. We will insist on our position until all these issues are resolved or at least normalized.
On Rogozin’s appointment
Transdniestria welcomes the appointment of Dmitry Rogozin as High Representative for Transdniestrian issues. First of all, we find it important that there exists an opportunity for Russian citizens-residents of Transdniestria to interact with Russia high officials, that there is an official who can resolve their problems quickly and efficiently. Today there is a number of such problems, and they’ve existed for a dozen years. We hope that after Rogozin’s assignment we will be able to resolve the most pressing of these. For example, the Russian community in Transdniestria is deprived of proper consular services. We have over 150,000 Russian citizens living in Transdniestria and they have problems with consular services and prospects of education in Russia, etc. All these problems need to be settled. Of course there are some other issues we want to resolve – economic issues, transportation issues – we hope that we will finally find a way to resolve them that would be acceptable to our neighbors – Ukraine and Moldova – and would be profitable for us. We hope that the guarantor state, the Russian Federation, will be able to protect the interests of its citizens in Transdniestria and the population in general with the help of the High Representative.
On Russia’s support
Of course, the lion’s share of help is granted to us by the Russian Federation. This is primarily economic help. You know that Russia carries out a number of projects of support for pensioners and pre-school establishments, as well as to the agrarian sector. So I would like to stress once again that the main share of help comes from Russia. Yes, some other public organizations – Russian, international and Ukrainian – help us, but the volume of these investments is incomparable with those that are made by Russia. So I would like to sincerely thank those Russian officials and members of public organizations that take up the problem of helping Russian and other residents of Transdniestria. Due to a number of circumstances, including the fact that our state isn’t recognized, our people find themselves in very difficult social and economic circumstances, and we – the government of Transdniestria – are unable to resolve all of them by ourselves for now.
***
Today we have reformed our customs, our government, our city administration in order to achieve maximum transparency. It would allow our future investors to see all the rules that exist.
As for the media climate around our state, it is, unfortunately, not the most favorable one. We are lacking information support, but we hope to change it soon. We are standing for honesty and transparency – and we hope our partners also value these principles.
