Igor Dodon

The new mayor of the Moldovan capital is widely seen as Russia's most promising political advocate in the country, after President Igor Dodon.

Moldova's coalition government was in jeopardy on Friday after the Socialist Party gave the pro-EU Prime Minister Maia Sandu a deadline to abandon her plan to take personal responsibility for naming the new General Prosecutor - after a commission entrusted with the job was axed.

Socialist Party candidate Ion Ceban won the mayoral race for Chisinau in the elections on Sunday with 52.39 per cent of the votes cast.

The pro-European candidate and co-president of the ACUM bloc, Andrei Nastase, scored 48.61 per cent.

According to data from the Central Election Commission, Ceban won the votes of 123,807 citizens, while Nastase got 112,513 votes.

In the second run-off round of local elections in the former Soviet country, Moldovan citizens on Sunday will select bosses for another 380 town halls.

In the first round, on October 20, voters elected 518 mayors in a race in which the pro-Russian Moldovan Socialist Party, PSRM, won the biggest number of votes in the country.

Russia has refused to increase export quotas for Moldovan goods for 2019, setting a quota of 15,000 export permits for Moldovan producers - 3,000 less than in 2018.

The Moldovan Economy and Infrastructure Ministry on Wednesday said Russia wanted Moldova first to increase the number of permits for Russian transport operators.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis urged Moldova not to pursue a federal arrangement as a solution to the problem of its breakaway region of Transnistria at a meeting with the President of Moldova, Igor Dodon, in New York on Wednesday.

The two presidents met on the sidelines of the 74th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

AGERPRES Special correspondent Irinela Visan reports: President Klaus Iohannis had a brief meeting with his counterpart from Chisinau, Igor Dodon, on the sidelines of the 74th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, where the former stressed that the European path of the Republic of Moldova is the only option that can bring prosperity to its citizens.

President Rumen Radev has been reassured by his Moldovan counterpart, Igor Dodon, that the territorial-administrative reform undertaken by Moldova would not affect the status and integrity of Taraclia district populated by ethnic Bulgarians, said the presidential press office.

Moldova will no longer take a hostile attitude towards Russian journalists and investors, Moldovan President Igor Dodon said in an interview for the Russian daily Kommersant on Monday.

In the interview, Dodon said this had been agreed in the government coalition that unites the pro-Russian Socialist Party and the pro-European ACUM [NOW] bloc.

Human rights activists from the "Occupy Guguta" movement in Moldova unveiled a banner on Tuesday night at the national football match between Moldova and Turkey, with a critical message for the authoritarian Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.