Communist Party chief in separatist Transnistria reported stabbed to death in Moldova

According to the law enforcers of the unrecognized Transnistria, Khorzhan was found dead by his wife in their house in the village of Sucleia

Milana Golovan

News editor at LIGA.net

July 17 2023, 15:15

Oleg Khorzhan (Russian media)

On July 17, the leader of the Communist Party of unrecognized Transnistria Oleg Khorzhan was found dead in a private house near Tiraspol, states the message of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the region.

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The department said that Khorzhan's body showed signs of "violent death". Police say he was found dead by his wife in one of the rooms of their house, next to an open safe.

At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs added that "the safe was empty."

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Some Russian propagandist and Moldovan mass media write that Khorzhan was allegedly stabbed to death.

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The MP of the illegitimate State Duma of the Russian Federation and the leader of the Russian Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov claims that Khorzhan was killed.

"Our leader of the Transnistrian Communist Party, Oleg Khorzhan, died tonight. He was killed at home, we demand an immediate investigation and establish [the circumstances]," he said.

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From 2010 to 2019, Oleg Khorzhan was a member of the parliament of unrecognized Transnistria. In 2018, the court sentenced him to 4.5 years of imprisonment in the case of the use of violence against a representative of the authorities. Khorzhan was released in December 2022. At that time, Zyuganov defended Khorzhan and said that he was imprisoned allegedly "only because he spoke out against the mafia."

In December 2021, presidential elections were held in Transnistria, in which the current head of the unrecognized republic, Vadim Krasnoselsky, who advocates rapprochement with Russia, won. Khorzhan, who was in prison at the time and also advocated rapprochement with Moscow, called not to recognize the results of the elections.

REFERENCE. Moldova lost control over Transnistria after the armed conflict of 1992, which allegedly arose "due to the fear" of the pro-Russian part of the population that Moldova would become part of Romania. The occupation troops of the Russian Federation were deployed there. In 2006, the so-called "Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic" held an unrecognized "referendum" on joining the Russian Federation, but Moscow did not greenlight the accession of the separatist region. In April 2014, the "PMR" again called on Russia to recognize the "republic" as an independent state, but Moscow also refused. The OSCE declaration in 1999 welcomed "the commitment of the Russian Federation to complete the withdrawal of Russian forces from the territory of Moldova by the end of 2002". In May 2017, the Constitutional Court of Moldova recognized their stay in the Republic of Moldova as illegal. In June 2018, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria.