A quarter of century passed, but the pain does not subside

June 19, 1992, armed Moldovan aggressors entered the peaceful city of Bendery. The events, which were later called the Bender tragedy, claimed the lives of several hundred Pridnestrovians. The memory of the bloody summer will forever remain in the heart of every Pridnestrovian woman. Every year June 19 flags with black ribbons are lowered in the city. Leadership of the republic, defenders of Bendery, relatives of the deceased, activists of public organizations, youth gather in the central city square in front of the state administration, where 25 years ago the center of residents of Bendery resistance was formed. A defender of Bendery, chairman of - Bendery City Executive Committee in 1992, Vyacheslav Kogut opened the meeting.

The President Vadim Krasnoselsky reminded that June 19, 1992 is not the first tragic date in the modern history of our republic. Two years earlier, provocations began, among them - the murder of law enforcement officers, the shooting of a bus. And just a few days before the armed attack on Bendery, the Moldovan parliament voted for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

Igor Smirnov, the first president of Pridnestrovie, addressed all those present.

At the end of the meeting, a message was sent to the descendants. The capsule with a message to the future was sealed in the summer of 1993 - the first anniversary of the Bender tragedy. "We were killed, we were made to think like Kishinev, we wanted to put on our knees, considering people second-class," the message says. Then the participants of the meeting went along the road of memory from the Liberation Square to the Memorial of Memory and Sorrow. Schoolchildren, as well as mothers and wives of the deceased heroes, took portraits of the deceased defenders of Bendery. The President Vadim Krasnoselsky, Speaker of the Parliament Alexander Shcherba, Chairman of the Government Alexander Martynov, Deputies of the Supreme Council and heads of the ministries laid flowers in memory of the victims, of the people who defended Bendery.