Legal analysis of the moldovan-russian agreement from July 21, 1992 on the ceasefire in the Transnistrean conflict

The Moldovan-Russian ceasefire agreement of July 21, 1992 is a bilateral act, suspending hostilities and passing the interstate dispute from its active, "hot" phase to a latent, "frozen" phase. The purpose of this document was to end the military confrontations on the Dniester. The document is officially called the "Convention on the Principles of Peaceful Settlement of the Armed Conflict in the Transnistrian Region of the Republic of Moldova" and was signed in Moscow by Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Mircea Snegur, in the presence of the Transnistrian leaders. The agreement provided for an immediate ceasefire, the creation of a “security zone”, the establishment of peacekeeping forces from Russian, Moldovan and separatist militaries. The parties in conflict on the Dniester were the Russian Federation, as the aggressor power, and the Republic of Moldova, as the aggressor state. Gradually, the Russian Federation shifted its emphasis towards defining the conflict on the Dniester as a strictly internal one, by no means interstate. Thus, the Moldovan-Russian dispute in Transnistria came to be presented as the "Transnistrian conflict".