Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Founder and editor-in-chief of Triunghi.md. Ion (Nalyk) Calmîș has worked at the intersection of journalism and technology in the Republic of Moldova for over two decades — a road that began in Ungheni, as a reporter at the newspaper Unghiul. He is CTO of Studio Technologies, the company behind the platforms of some of the country's most-read newsrooms (unimedia.info, jurnal.md, jurnaltv.md, tvrmoldova.md), and Head of AI Ecosystem at Esempla Systems (Moldova's GovStack infrastructure); he co-founded the newsroom Replica Media. At Triunghi.md he puts that experience — and artificial intelligence, at scale — in the service of local journalism built on source triangulation (People, Documents, Data) and on impartiality.
The Ungheni Tourist Information Centre has officially launched its first guided walking route through the city — 17 stops at cultural, historical, architectural and spiritual landmarks, from the „Eiffel” bridge over the Prut to the cathedral. The tour lasts 1.5–2 hours, is guided, runs Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, and requires a prior booking.
On 2 July, in Bucharest, the contract was signed for the final section of the “Union” Motorway (A8) — the 15.5 km between Iași and the Prut, but also, for the first time, 4.7 km of motorway on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, from the future bridge at Ungheni to the town's bypass. The works on the Moldovan bank, worth around 64 million euros, are fully covered by the Romanian side, through the European SAFE programme. It is the missing piece in the file of the Ungheni bridge — but the motorway stops at Ungheni, not at Chișinău, and the timeline remains long.
Vitalie Vrabie, mayor of the town of Ungheni, says he has already filed the request for the first financial incentive of the amalgamation — 600,000 lei, state money, calculated by the number of residents. In an interview on TVR Moldova, he rejects the accusation that the merger of the communities around the town is 'formal, forced, rushed' and maintains that the initiative came from the neighbouring mayors, not from him. The documents confirm his figure and the procedure; critics of the reform, however, point out that a 'voluntary' amalgamation, incentivised with billions and doubled by a mandatory one after 2027, is only half voluntary.
The Ungheni District Sports School announces that its U16 youth team has qualified for the National League (Liga Națională) — the top tier of youth football in the Republic of Moldova. The federation confirms that the team played in the promotion round at this age group. From the new season, youngsters from a district school with a minimal budget will go up against the academies of the capital and Tiraspol — Sheriff, Zimbru, Dacia Buiucani, Rebeja.
During a patrol, the Carabinieri of the Compania mobilă de intervenție in Ungheni were alerted about a woman who felt ill, called the 112 emergency service and stayed with her until a medical team took over. It is exactly the kind of intervention for which this rapid-response unit — the second of its kind in the country — was set up in September 2025.
The town of Ungheni is borrowing 10 million lei to modernise its streets — not through a classic bank loan, but by issuing municipal bonds, that is debt securities that both residents and companies can buy. Mayor Vitalie Vrabie presented the issue at a national event in Chișinău on 1 July, alongside Leova and Ceadîr-Lunga. It is the first time Ungheni has turned to the capital market, and at 10 million lei it becomes the largest issue by a Moldovan town after the capital, from the publicly known figures. The money goes to an already approved list of roads; the interest will be paid, over time, by the local budget — that is, by the people of Ungheni.
The calendar is set. On Thursday, at Casa Fotbalului, the Liga 1 fixture draw was held, and the town's team learned its full path through the first phase of the 2026/2027 season. FCM Ungheni was drawn into Group A and opens the championship at home on Saturday, 1 August, at 6 p.m., against Vulturii Cutezători. Fifteen rounds follow, until 27 November, eight of them at home, against opponents such as Zimbru-2, CF Univer and FC Iskra. For the people of Ungheni who want to watch their side, it is the first clear map of the football autumn — after a summer of friendlies and a promotion narrowly missed in May.
At the Ungheni District Council, representatives of the Ministry of Labour and of the Farmers' Federation trained the district's agricultural producers on e-Zilier — the electronic register in which, since 1 June 2026, every seasonal worker must be logged before picking up a hoe, with an electronic signature and under threat of a fine if they are not entered in time. The platform promises less red tape and, for the first time, pension credit for day labourers. The local stakes are high: the district works some 30,000 hectares but has only around 1,200 formal agricultural employees — a sign that the bulk of fieldwork is precisely the seasonal kind the platform is bringing into the open. Hanging over it all is a separate tax proposal for 2027 that would raise contributions for day labourers from 0% to 21%.
Today, 2 July, marks 195 years since the birth of Alexander Bernardazzi — Chișinău's chief architect in the second half of the 19th century and the author of dozens of landmark buildings, who designed and gifted the people of Ungheni the plan for the “St. Alexander Nevsky” Cathedral, built in 1903–1905 and now an episcopal cathedral. A street in the Tineretului district has borne his name since 2005. A bonus: the story comes with a correction — Bernardazzi was not born in Saint Petersburg, as often stated, but in Pyatigorsk, in the Caucasus — and a curiosity: that same street once carried the name of another great Bessarabian architect.
