Bessarabia Governorate

Moldova has started the process of rebranding Victory Day amid protests on Thursday in front of the parliament building in the capital Chisinau.

Several dozen people protested in front of the parliament with Soviet-era and Russian flags after the pro-European governing party, Action and Solidarity, PAS, put a draft bill on parliament's agenda.

A 20-year-old Bessarabian Bulgarian, Ivan Minkov, a resident of the Ukrainian village of Krichnoye (Chushmelia, Bolgrad oblast), has died on the Ukrainian front.

The news was announced by Stepan Velikov, who is from the village of the murdered Ivan Minkov, and was spread by Viktor Stoyanov of the Macedonia Foundation. Today he told details on Nova TV.

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.

The European Court of Human Rights, ECHR, on Thursday ruled that Russia has violated human rights and the right to freedom and security in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, which it has de facto controlled since it broke away from Moldova in 1992.

Pro-Russian Socialists are expected to triumph in the local elections being held on Sunday in Moldova, where all eyes are on the outcome in the pro-European bastion of the capital, Chisinau.

The leader of the Dignity and Truth Platform Party, PPDA, Andrei Nastase, intends to run again in the new mayoral race for the capital, Chisinau which should take place this summer. Parliament in Moldova has not yet set an exact date for the election.

Home to some 700,000 inhabitants, Moldova's capital, Chisinau, may not be the most aesthetically pleasing of European capitals, but its unique mix of brutalist architecture, modern high-rises and plenty of green space give it a charm of its own.

Culture and National Identity Minister George Ivascu delivered on Tuesday, one century since the union of Basarabia with Romania, a message of hope for a common European future to all Romanians, on both sides of the Pruth River, underscoring that dreams can become reality.

An explosion caused by a grenade going off in a shop in Moldova's capital Chisinau on Tuesday killed two people and wounded three.

Local police investigating the case said that the explosion, which happened at around noon, was an "accident".

Romania wants to increase its investments in Moldova, Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila said in Chisinau on Tuesday.

At the end of a meeting with her Moldovan counterpart Pavel Filip, she said that one of the related priorities of Romania is the operation of the Iasi-Ungheni-Chisinau gas pipeline.