After the Beirut explosion, some politicians and experts from the Republic of Moldova started discussions, while expressing their concern, regarding the biggest ammunition depot in Eastern Europe located in Cobasna village, which is under the jurisdiction of Tiraspol. The depot is permanently on the OSCE list of ‘red alerts’, which frequently drew attention to this time bomb on the territory of the Republic of Moldova.

MP Mihai Popsoi, member of the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), has expressed concern about consequences of a possible explosion at this depot. “This depot of the Russian Federation pose a danger to the citizens of Moldova. That is why old ammunition must be urgently evacuated or destroyed with special equipment,” the MP said.

The opposition believes that the well-known solution, namely the immediate evacuation of ammunition, is not put in practice primarily due to the obedience to Russia of the Chisinau authorities, first of all President Igor Dodon.

Countless talks and negotiations on the ammunition evacuation from the region have not yielded results.

“The problem is that, in the last two decades, access to the depot has not been allowed to any international observers. The information is provided only by the separatist regime or the contingent of the Russian Federation,” stated former Minister of Defence, Vitalie Marinuta.

“First of all, there are chemical processes that cannot be controlled. So, at any moment we can have involuntary explosions because of the way the weapons are stored,” claimed Ion Leahu, a former official of the Unified Control Commission (UCC).

In case of an explosion, as Marinuta declared referring to a study conducted by the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Moldova, the power of the explosion would be equivalent to that of a 10 ton atomic bomb.

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The military depot in Cobasna was created in the 1940s in Transnistria. During the Soviet period, the artillery ammunition depot no. 1411 was a strategic arsenal of the western military district of the USSR. Most of the ammunition was stored here after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the former GDR, Czechoslovakia and other socialist countries. Currently about 20000 tons (!) of weapons and ammunition are stored at this depot and a possible explosion could cause a huge ecological and human disaster.

The last Russian proposal regarding the ammunition depot from Cobasna was launched in August 2019 by the Russian Minister of Defence. It provided for the initiation of a new process of scrapping the ammunition stored in Cobasna, but things did not change for a year.

Photo: mopmr.idknet.com