 Russian occupation over Moldavia and Wallachia (as well as the Bulgarian town of Silistra) was prolonged pending the payment of war reparations by the Ottomans.Emperor Nicholas I assigned Fyodor Pahlen as governor over the two countries before the actual peace, as the first in a succession of three "Plenipotentiary Presidents of the Divans in Moldavia and Wallachia", and official supervisor of the two commissions charged with drafting the "Statutes".The bodies, having for secretaries Gheorghe Asachi in Moldavia and Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei in Wallachia, had resumed their work while the cholera epidemic was still raging, and continued it after Pahlen had been replaced with Pyotr Zheltukhin in February 1829.