“In reality and in practice, however, we have not participated in this organization for a long time, including various CIS events, because it is not in accordance with the national interests of Moldova,” the Interfax agency quotes the minister as saying.
The Moldovan Parliament approved the Law on Withdrawal from the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS and from the Charter of the CIS during the final reading at the beginning of April. “From a legal and formal point of view, from the point of view of international law, we will no longer be a member of the CIS after twelve months,” he said, adding that the country will officially withdraw from the CIS on April 8 next year.
The exit from the CIS was initiated by the Moldovan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which argued that some members of the CIS do not respect the basic values and principles of the community. It is a provision that member states recognize and respect each other’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of existing borders.
Chisinau believes that this principle, on which the creation of the CIS was based, is being violated by Russia in relation to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Moscow occupies all three mentioned countries to a greater or lesser extent.
Moldova started withdrawing from the CIS gradually, first withdrawing from a number of CIS agreements and announcing in January of this year that it had started the process of withdrawing from this Russian-led organization, which unites most of the post-Soviet countries.
According to Moscow, the decision to withdraw from the CIS is the first step towards the loss of sovereignty for Moldova. According to the Russian state agency TASS, this was stated by Vasilij Kočmar, who was appointed by the Russians to a post where he “conducted peacekeeping operations in the zone of the Moldovan-Transnistrian conflict”. The Russians occupy Moldavian Transnistria and have several thousand soldiers stationed there.
