Bessarabia

Two Bulgarians from the Bolhrad region have recently died while serving in Ukraine. According to the Bolhrad Regional Military Administration, Sergey Dachev, 39, from Bolhrad, passed away on September 6 in the Kharkiv region. He was serving as a soldier in Ukraine's State Border Service.

Tragedy struck the Ukrainian port city of Odesa as Russia unleashed a devastating assault, claiming the lives of five people and leaving over 30 injured. The attack, which targeted residential areas, has sent shockwaves through the city and plunged it into mourning.

Two brothers - Igor and Yevgeny Bonchevi from the village of Nadezhdivka, Artsyz municipality, Bolhrad Raion, died at the front this year. "This is a great tragedy for the family - their two sons, aged 32 and 38, died," wrote the Artsyz municipality on its official website.

This was the second and biggest wave of deportations out of the three that the Soviet Union enacted in Moldova. Between 1941 and 1951 there were three waves of deportations, and historians estimate that the total number of deportees was between 80,000 and 120,000.

The move, however, has been criticised as discriminatory, favouring one religious community over myriad others that were snuffed out under Soviet rule and had their properties seized by the state.

Currently, Moldovan law does not provide for restitution of property claimed by legal entities, only private individuals.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Romania of occupying Bessarabia until 1940. She was angered by a Romanian Foreign Ministry announcement praising the replacement of the Moldovan language with Romanian in all Moldovan laws as a "restoration of scientific truth".

Moldova will hand over the building of the former Theological Seminary in Chisinau to the Metropolis of Bessarabia, which is linked to the Romanian Orthodox Church, if a draft law registered by several deputies of the ruling Action and Solidarity Party, PAS, is adopted.

The Ukrainian authorities must observe the rights of the Romanian historical community to an extent "proportional to the fair treatment" of ethnic minorities living in Romania, Chairman of the Committee on Romanians Everywhere Senator Claudiu Tarziu of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) told an international forum called "Romanian Communities in the Odessa Region: Efficient Ways to D

Moldova commemorated 80 years since the first of three massive waves of deportations ordered by the Soviet authorities and executed by NKVD special services.

Ukraine lodged an official protest on Wednesday, after Bulgaria's parliament criticised a planned reform to divide the Bolhrad region in Ukraine's southern Odessa district into five sections. The area is home to a large ethnic Bulgarian community.