Moldova has changed the three-letter international abbreviation of Chisinau’s airport in a new attempt to distance itself from its Soviet heritage and dependence on the Russian language.
Moldovan Minister of Infrastructure and Territorial Development Andrei Spinu said that starting January 18, Chisinau airport will use the abbreviation RMO, which means Republic of Moldova, rather than the Soviet-era designation KIV.
According to Reuters, the old abbreviation was used as an approximation of the Russian-language name of the Moldovan capital Kishinyov (Chisinau), which was replaced in the post-Soviet era by the Romanian-language name Chișinău.
“Changing the abbreviation is a rather lengthy procedure, and it has been going on for almost a year now,” Spinu told Pro-Tv Chisinau. “The main goal is to remove the Russian name KIV and get rid of the legacy of what the name Chisinau meant.”
Despite the common misconception in the post-Soviet space that Moldova has a Moldovan language, Romanian is in fact the only official language in the country that lies between Ukraine and European Union member Romania, but Russian is still widely used.
According to Spin, attempts to find other abbreviations that reflect the post-Soviet name of the capital have encountered difficulties, as all the proposed options are already in use.
“I think we will quickly get used to the new abbreviation for the name of our country,” he said in an interview with Pro-TV.
To recap, Moldova’s pro-European President Maia Sandu condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called Moscow the main threat to her country’s security. This month, the European Union agreed to start membership enlargement talks for both Ukraine and Moldova.
As expected, Moscow accused Sandu and other officials of Russophobia.
Popular flight tracking services already use the new airport code. By the way, it is worth noting that Flightradar24 displays both the old and the new abbreviation for convenience:
