Ion Chicu

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has labelled as "absolutely unacceptable" the recent statements made by the Moldovan Prime Minister, Ion Chicu, about Romania, on Friday, on a social network.

The Orthodox Church in Moldova has denounced the potential use of a vaccine against COVID-19, calling it a satanic plan to microchip people, or introduce other foreign devices into the human body.

Moldovan authorities on Monday said they were scrapping the concession agreement for Chisinau international airport and moving to take it back into state ownership.

The Prime Minister, Ion Chicu, said the government had started the procedure of declaring the concession holder, Avia Invest, insolvent, meaning the cancellation of the agreement.

Support in the Moldovan parliament for Prime Minister Ion Chicu's coalition government is slipping away, as the Socialist Party, PSRM, and its Democratic Party, PD, allies now only hold 54 of the 101 seats in the legislature - a majority of three.

Moldovan Prime Minister Ion Chicu told a TV show on Wednesday that the country's public finances were in dire straits owing to the pandemic, and the country desperately needed a new IMF loan to avoid catastrophe.

Moldovan citizens returning home on charter flights organized by the authorities are now obliged - together with the cost of the ticket - to pay for a COVID-19 test on arrival under an order issued on Friday by the Moldovan Civil Aviation Authority.

A decision by the Moldovan government to spend cash on medals commemorating Victory Day in World War II has drawn criticism from opposition politicians who say the events effectively glorify the former Soviet Union.

Party and the centre-left former ruling Democratic Party led by ex-Prime Minister Pavel Filip signed an agreement on Monday to split the cabinet portfolios between them.

Moldova on Monday marked 28 years since the outbreak of the Dniester War, when regular army, police and volunteers battled pro-Russian separatists in the breakaway region of Transnistria, on the left bank of the Dniester River.

Russian billionaire Andrey Goncharenko, owner of a Gazprom subsidiary, on Tuesday, said he had given up his shares in Avia Invest, the company that has run Chisinau International Airport under a concession since 2013.

For years, the airport has been at the centre of controversies over its ownership and the legality of the concession awarded for the next 50 years.