Chisinau, January 2 (Interfax) - The government of Moldova condemns the incident in the security zone on the Dniester River and urges restraint, said Moldova's Prime Minister Vlad Filat.
"The situation must be assessed and its escalation must be prevented to rule out stronger tensions," Filat told investigators on Monday.
The prime minister also ordered compensation payments to be made to the family of the victim, Vadim Pisar, who died in the incident, and urged the Prosecutor General’s Office to "ask the best experts to investigate the incident tactfully and professionally." "The probe should be run in cooperation with Russian officials," he said, according to the government’s press service.
"Representatives of the Russian embassy and of the Joint Control Commission, and other officials will be contacted on this issue shortly to facilitate the probe," the press service said.
The prime minister ordered "proposals to be made on long-term measures related to the peacekeepers’ operations in the Transdniestrian region, including in the context of efficiency of their operations in the current format and the free movement of civilians between the two banks of the Dniester."
Reports said earlier that a Russian peacekeeper fatally wounded a local resident in the security zone of the Transdniestrian region early on January 1. The incident occurred at Checkpoint 9 on the bridge across the Dniester River between the Transdniestrian village of Pyryta and the Moldovan town of Vadul-luy-Vode. Resident of Pyryta, Vadim Pisar, 19, who was traveling in a car, disregarded the peacekeepers’ order to stop, rammed the boom barrier and smashed the halt sign at the checkpoint. The chief of the peacekeepers’ force fired warning bursts and then opened fire on the car, seriously wounding Pisar. The wounded village resident was rushed to a hospital, but he died soon after a surgery was performed on his spine. Moldova’s prosecutors started a probe into the incident.
The Russian Military Prosecutor’s Office has launched a check into the incident, too, a spokesman for the Western Military District’s Military Prosecutor’s Office told Interfax.
